Sehla - A Bahraini rights activist is facing criminal charges for publishing photos on his Twitter account of a man who died in police custody.
Just hours earlier on Sunday, one of two detained protesters who were declared dead on Saturday by Bahraini authorities was buried in his home village of Sehla on the outskirts of the Bahraini capital Manama.
An Interior Ministry statement said that the head of the dissolved Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR), Nabeel Rajab, would appear in front of the military public prosecutor for publishing “fabricated” pictures on his Twitter account of Ali Isa Saqer, 31.
Along with the press release, the ministry issued two pictures it said were taken by forensic officials showing the original condition of Saqer's body, before he was turned over to his family.
Rajab could not be immediately reached for comment.
His last Twitter post read: “Brothers, sisters, if I am arrested I call on you to intensify your efforts to fill the gap created by my absence -I am full of confidence in you and your belief in the righteousness of your cause.”
According to an earlier Interior Ministry statement, Saqer had died before reaching the hospital, after police inside the detention centre where he was being held used force to subdue his “unruliness.”
The statement did not clarify if other detainees were involved or injured in the Saqer incident.
His body showed signs of severe beating over the head, chest, back and legs. Local morgue staff noticed that his left arm was broken.
Police said that Saqer was being held for attempted murder of a police office, whom he allegedly tried to run over with a car on March 13 during unrest on the streets. Saqer's family said that he had turned himself in a few days ago, after police raided the family home several times to arrest him.
Another detainee, Zakria Rashid al-Asherri, 40, is expected to be buried on Tuesday. His family had demanded that an autopsy be carried out to determine the cause of death.
On Saturday, the Interior Ministry attributed the death of al- Asherri -who was discovered dead inside his prison cell - to complications of sickle-cell anaemia, which the man's family disputed, saying he was only a carrier of the genetic disease.
“He had never complained before of anything relating to sickle-cell anaemia. He carried it but he was not sick as a result of it,” his brother, Ali al-Asherri, a former member of Parliament for the largest Shiite opposition grouping al-Wefaq, told dpa.
Al-Asherri, a blogger who supervised a local website called al- Dair was arrested on April 2 on a charge of inciting hatred of the regime and calling for its overthrow on the internet.
The deaths of Saqer and al-Asherri bring the death toll of people reported dead while in police custody to three within six days.
On April 3, Hassan Jassim Maki, 39, was the first to be declared dead in police custody. Police had attributed his death to a sickle-cell anaemia, while his relatives accused police of torture and medical neglect.
A security crack-down that began following the February 14 pro-reform protests had lead to the deaths of more than 21 people and the arrests of more than 400 - many of whom are politicians, activists and professionals.
Hundreds of others, mainly Shi’as, had been sacked from their jobs for taking part in a general strike called to support the protesters.
Bahrain, a Sunni monarchy where Shi’as account for some 60 percent of the population, and which serves as a home for the US Navy 5th Fleet Command in the region, accused Iran of interfering and inciting the protests to destabilise the regime and the regimes of neighbouring Gulf states.
The opposition insists that their demands arise from local concerns and demands for reform, with no links to outside agendas.
In recent days, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Doctors Without Borders were among several human-rights groups that have criticised the Bahraini government crackdown. - Sapa-dpa