Bahraini government's Information Affairs Authority has reacted to a report issued by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) about month-long crackdown on the country's protests.
Bahrain's state TV had been accused by the BICI of preventing the country's opposition from issuing public statements through official media.
Sheikh Fawaz bin Mohammed Al Khalifa, president of the Bahraini Information Affairs Authority, claimed that the opposition had never been prevented from appearing on state TV.
“In fact, we invited more than 300 … from the opposition, including activists and civil servants, to appear on TV and they either refused or faked illness,” Fawaz said in an interview with the al-Arabiya channel.
According to reports, his remarks have enraged Bahrain's Prime Minister Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa who ordered the interview to be removed from the website of Bahrain's official news agency.
On November 23, the BICI charged that the ruling Al Khalifa regime had used “excessive force, including the extraction of forced confessions against detainees,” in their efforts to crush the protest rallies in Bahrain.
According to the BICI report, the commission had received 1,624 complaints from individuals, saying that they had been dismissed or suspended from their jobs.
The Bahraini interior ministry and security services “followed a systematic practice of physical and psychological mistreatment, which amounted in many cases to torture, with respect to a large number of detainees,” the BICI report said.
Since the beginning of the popular uprising in Bahrain, dozens of people have been killed, some under torture, and many others injured. Hundreds of protesters have also been detained by the US-backed dictatorship.
source : http://abna.ir
