Bahrain Mirror:  Fatima Al-Halwachi, the Head of Monitoring and Documentation department of the European-Bahraini Organisation for Human Rights (EBOHR), sent an open letter to the President of the European Parliament in which she explained her father's imprisonment conditions over a period of a year and a half.

Al-Halwachi said: "I wrote this letter about my father, Khalil Al-Halwachi (58 years), as he has spent a year and a half behind bars in the Dry Dock Prison in Bahrain."

"I still remember that night when my father was kidnapped again at the hands of masked security forces in plain clothing after raiding his house when he was home alone. I was not there (...) they successfully managed to plant a weapon under the living room table, claiming it was his," she added.

"He was then taken to the Criminal Investigation Directorate (CID) where lies the notorious torture chambers, as human rights activists call it, and where he was forced to sign false confessions after being threatened to have his only daughter, which is me, abused," Fatima Al-Halwachi further stated.

She highlighted that the conditions of her father's detention since then have been appalling. He was subjected to mistreatment and abuse by police officers, which led him to go on several hunger strikes. His latest one lasted for twenty-two days and his health severely deteriorated as a result.

Fatima Al-Halwachi who holds a Swedish passport hoped that the President of the European Parliament would urgently interfere to help reunite her family and strongly contribute to the release of her father.

Arabic Issue