MANAMA (Dispatches) – Amnesty International has demanded the Bahraini authorities investigate whether Hussein Barakat, a political inmate who died in jail days ago, received timely and appropriate medical treatment.
“Bahrain’s authorities must immediately launch an effective, independent and impartial investigation into the circumstances of Hussein Barakat’s death, including to determine whether he received timely and appropriate medical treatment,” said Lynn Maalouf, Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.
Lynn Maalouf added, “The Bahraini authorities’ continued failure to provide prisoners with face masks or hand sanitizer to protect against Covid-19 is unacceptable.”
Amnesty stated that Hussein Barakat was serving a life sentence after his 15 May 2018 conviction on ‘terrorism-related’ charges along with 114 other defendants after a grossly unfair trial known as the “Zulfiqar Bridgades” case.
Bahrain’s definition of terrorism is overly broad, does not require an element of violence, and has at times been applied to non-violent acts of political opposition.
Hussein Barakat’s wife told Amnesty International that there were 15 other prisoners in his cell, which had only 10 beds, forcing some of them to sleep on the floor.
She said she was only allowed two calls with her husband during his illness, which lasted from late May until his death.
She also said Barakat was not transferred out of the notorious Jau prison – which houses political leaders, human rights defenders, and other prisoners of conscience – until after he was too weak to walk.
Prison officials who called to tell her about her husband’s illness had said he was in a stable condition, but when she managed to speak to a nurse, she understood he had been placed on a ventilator in an ICU unit.
Bahrain’s interior ministry in a statement said Barakat, 48, died at a hospital on June 10 after being infected with COVID-19. He had been taken from prison to Salmaniya Hospital on May 29, it said.
Bahrain has come under pressure from human rights organizations over prison conditions, including overcrowding, poor sanitation and lack of medical care.
Demonstrations in Bahrain have been held on a regular basis ever since a popular uprising began in mid-February 2011.
On April 19, Bahrain’s most prominent cleric Ayatollah Sheikh Isa Qassim said drawing up a new constitution was the only way out of the political crisis in the protest-hit tiny kingdom, urging the regime in Manama to pursue an agreement with the Bahraini opposition instead of increasingly suppressing the dissidents.