The Butcher of Bahrain is dead

The Butcher of Bahrain is dead

Ian Henderson, the British officer who was a notorious torturer employed by Bahraini regime of al-Khalifa in the 1970s has died in Bahrain.

In addition to torturing Bahraini opposition activists, Ian Henderson was known for his brutal techniques against the Mau Mau activists in Kenya.

Henderson died yesterday in Bahrain, but torture in the tiny Persian Gulf island nation is still being implemented, and his policy of torture didn’t die with him.

In 2011, Bahraini regime of al-Khalifa released 300 political prisoners under extreme pressure from protesters who are fed up with his 40-years brutal rule.

Released political prisoners including academics, human rights activists, bloggers and clerics held the UK government responsible for the repressive policies of the Bahraini regime.

“The British government bears a heavy responsibility for the repression in Bahrain.

What we have here is an apparatus of torture that was formed and instructed by British security personnel”, said one of the released detainees, Abduljalil al-Singace, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Bahrain.

They said the methods of interrogation are “identical” to those used during the 1970s, 80s and 90s when Bahraini secret police, the Security and Intelligence Service (SIS) was headed by Ian Henderson.

Bahraini opposition groups recognize the notorious Henderson as the “torturer-in-chief”.

The former detainees, over and over again, invoked the name of the former head of state security, Henderson, as the ultimate author of their torturous conditions.

They were electrocuted on the genitals, while others were raped by the guards with glass bottles, as evidenced by the former prisoners. Others said they were hung by the hands and feet “like animals” and beaten with hard rubber hoses.

Henderson, who was awarded the George Cross for quashing the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya during the 1950s, was installed by the UK government as head of security in Bahrain in 1968 when the country was a British protectorate.

Older Bahraini activists recalled that there was a sharp spike in repression and maltreatment of prisoners in the years following Henderson’s appointment – a role he held for 30 years.

In 1986 – after tens of thousands of Bahrainis had been through the prison system, many claiming horrific maltreatment – Henderson was awarded the CBE in the UK’s honors list.