Bahrain Mirror: The Bahraini authorities released on Thursday (March 17, 2016) one of the senior figures of the Islamic Action Society (Amal), Sheikh Jassim Al-Damestani after serving five years in prison.

Al-Damestani is one of the Shiite religious clerics who were arrested in March 2011 after the entrance of Saudi and Emirati troops into the country to crush the pro-democracy popular protests.

A Bahraini court sentenced Al-Damestani alongside a number of Shiite clerics and activists, namely the Secretary-General of Amal Society Sheikh Mohammad Al-Mahfouz to 10 years in prison. The court of appeals; however, commuted the sentence to 5 years in November 2012.

Al-Damestani was repeatedly subjected to beatings and torture inside prison. He along with a group of other prisoners met in May 2014 with a UN human rights delegation. The group included prisoners from cell blocks 4 and 6, who went on hunger strike to protest the raid launched by security forces on Jaw Prison, as well as the beatings and torture that the prisoners were subjected to.

Al-Wefaq Shura Council member Mahdi Al-Ekri, who witnessed the events that took place in Jaw Prison in March 2015,  reported that Sheikh Al-Damestani was brutally beaten at the hands of a group of policemen over accusations made by a pro-ISIS prisoner that Al-Damestani cursed the "Prophet's companions" in his prayers.

Arabic Version