LONDON (Middle East Eye) – Rights advocates have accused the UK government of endangering six Bahraini boys who they say have been detained in an orphanage for two months and interrogated without lawyers.
The boys are believed to have been detained by the Persian Gulf island kingdom over charges they damaged a car with Molotov cocktails in 2020.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (Bird) say recent statements by British ministers supporting Bahrain’s justice system and Manama’s 2021 restorative justice law, under which the boys are held, have put them at risk of further abuse.
“Despite mounting evidence of abuse, the United Kingdom government has yet to criticize or even retract statements that appear to support Bahrain’s abusive detention of children,” said Bill Van Esveld, an associate director at HRW’s children’s rights division.
The groups are raising their concerns as the six boys, who are 14 and 15 years old, face the latest weekly review of their detention this Sunday.
Among the statements of concern are those made by British minister of state for Europe and North America, James Cleverly, to parliament last month, in an answer given to Scottish National MP Brendan O’Hara, who asked about the boys’ case.
The groups complained in an open letter to Foreign Secretary Liz Truss that his response appeared to condone the boys’ arrests and arbitrary detention despite the fact that their treatment violates the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and UNICEF guidance.
“This is not the first time that the minister has been asked to correct the record over the abuse of Bahraini children, after issuing one-sided biased statements that parrot the Bahraini regime and put children at risk,” Sayed Ahmed al-Wadaei, Bird’s advocacy director, said.
“If the UK is serious about its credibility on human rights, it must end its damaging hypocrisy and call out violations committed by its despotic allies in the Persian Gulf,” he added.
The rights groups also point to a visit last month to Bahrain by the Conservative peer Tariq Ahmad, during which he met with King Hamad and three ministers, and tweeted his support for Manama’s so-called restorative justice law.
While Ahmad was still in Bahrain, five cross-party UK parliamentarians urged him to raise the cases of political prisoners, including the six children, with Bahraini authorities.
Bahrain’s public prosecution alleges that the boys, who were 13 and 14 at the time of their alleged crime, threw Molotov cocktails that damaged a car near a police station in the island of Sitra, located around 5 kilometers south of the capital Manama, in 2020.
They also have been denied any family visits and are only permitted one 10-minute long phone call each week, according to the findings.
Bahrain’s most prominent cleric Ayatollah Sheikh Isa Qassim has said that drawing up a new constitution is the only way out of the political crisis in the protest-hit tiny Persian Gulf country, urging the regime in Manama to pursue an agreement with the Bahraini opposition instead of increasingly suppressing dissent.