On 17 December 2007 on Martyrs' Day, commemorating past victims of torture, the Special Security Forces began a wave of arrests targeting more than 60 persons, among them over ten activists.
In 2002 Royal Decree 56 established the clarification that amnesty was also granted to all state security officers who may have committed human rights abuses prior to 2001.
The Act, formally scrapped in 2001, contained measures permitting the government to arrest and imprison individuals without trial for up to three years for crimes relating to state security.
[fn 2] Individuals associated with the petitions were deemed to be acting against the regime and detained under the State Security Laws, subjected to torture and in some cases forced into exile.
The Security and Intelligence Service (SIS) and the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) were alleged frequently to conduct interrogation of such detainees under torture.
The methods of torture reported include: falaqa (beatings on the soles of the feet); severe beatings, sometimes with hose-pipes; suspension of the limbs in contorted positions accompanied by blows to the body; enforced prolonged standing; sleep deprivation; preventing victims from relieving themselves; immersion in water to the point of near drowning; burnings with cigarettes; piercing the skin with a drill; sexual assault, including the insertion of objects into the penis or anus; threats of execution or of harm to family members; and placing detainees suffering from sickle cell anaemia (said to be prevalent in the country) in air-conditioned rooms in the winter, which can lead to injury to internal organs.
The royally-appointed Prime Minister, Shaikh Khalifah ibn Sulman al-Khalifah (uncle of the present King), head of government throughout the period when torture has been alleged to have taken place, continued in office until his death in 2020.
In March 2000, King Hamad awarded several of the accused torturers with the Order of Shaikh Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa medal.
[4] The state's obligation to provide an effective remedy and the need for torture survivors to receive compensation and other forms of reparation was stressed by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.
Following an incident in the village of Jidhafs Bahraini human rights activists reported claims by detainees of severe beatings, electric shock, prolonged suspension in painful positions and other forms of abuse amounting to torture or other illegal treatment.
[1] Detainees arrested in March and April 2008 following clashes in and around the village of Karzakan that had resulted in the death of a National Security Agency officer in disputed circumstances also alleged torture and ill-treatment.
Detainees arrested in December 2008 who were alleged by the authorities to have been trained in the use of explosives and sabotage techniques or to have been recruited by the opposition Haq Movement for Liberty and Democracy to encourage violent unrest also complained of being subjected to torture and ill-treatment.
[1] In a letter to Bahrain's Interior Minister Shaikh Rashid bin Abdullah bin Ahmad Al Khalifa, Amnesty International called for an urgent and independent investigation into allegations that, soon after their arrest in December 2008, 13 individuals held incommunicado at the headquarters of the National Security Apparatus in Manama were tortured with electric shocks and beatings and by being suspended by the wrists for long periods.
Human Rights Watch found the accounts credible and the medical reports of government doctors and court documents corroborated the allegations.
As France and the United Kingdom provide the NSA and the Ministry of Interior, respectively, with training and assistance they "risk being implicated in prohibited practices and violating their own legal obligations if they cooperate with law enforcement forces they know or should know are employing torture or other ill-treatment.
According to the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) report, physical and psychological abuse was inflicted by the National Security Agency and the Ministry of Interior on a systematic basis and in many cases amounted to torture.