Report: Bahraini Political Prisoners to Go on Hunger-Strike

Prisoners in a Bahraini jail announced that they will go on hunger-strike for an indefinite period on Saturday in protest at mistreatment by prison guards.

The political prisoners of Bahrain’s al-Hawz al-Jaf prison announced that they will go on hunger-strike in protest at the prison guards’ misconduct and long and repeated solitary confinement of inmates.

Fatemeh al-Halvaji, a member of the European-Bahraini Human Rights watchdog, quoted his father Khalil al-Halvaji, who is a political prisoner jailed in al-Hawz al-Jaf, as complaining about being mistreated by the prison guards.

She noted that her father in a telephone conversation said that the political prisoners’ hunger strike will kick off on July 25.

On Wednesday, Bahraini foreign ministry sources disclosed that Manama intends to send tens of the country’s political prisoners to Saudi Arabia under a secret plan.

“The Bahraini government intends to transfer 100 political prisoners, including 20 women, to Saudi prisons at the request of the kingdom’s intelligence ministry,” an informed source in the Bahrain’s foreign ministry, who asked to remain unnamed for the sensitive nature of his information, told FNA.

The source noted that the Bahraini regime has even agreed that these prisoners be tortured by the Saudi intelligence ministry during the interrogations.

The Bahraini regime has been suppressing peaceful demonstrations by anti-government protesters across Bahrain since mid-February 2011.

Violence against the defenseless people escalated after a Saudi-led conglomerate of police, security and military forces from the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (PGCC) member states – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar – were dispatched to the tiny Persian Gulf kingdom on March 2011, to crack down on peaceful protestors for the Manama regime.

So far, hundreds of protesters have been killed, hundreds have gone missing and thousands of others have been injured by the Bahraini and Saudi soldiers. Thousands of people, including opposition party and religious leaders as well as renowned human rights activists, have been arrested while hundreds more have been sent to exile. All international human rights bodies have condemned the Al-Khalifa regime for exercising extreme violence against peaceful protests.