Fresh Fears over UK Links to Bahrain’s ‘Torture Prisons’
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Officials from Bahrain’s prison torture inspection panel were allowed secretly to visit Yarl’s Wood, Britain’s most controversial immigration detention center for women, raising fresh questions over the nature of the relationship between the UK and the Persian Gulf state.
In June 2013, delegates from Bahrain, where allegations of torture in police custody and in prisons are widespread, were given permission to access the center in Bedfordshire accompanied by members of the UK prison watchdog, the Guardian reported.
The visit is fresh evidence of the growing and often secret relationship between security officials in the two countries that has developed despite repeated allegations of torture in Bahraini detention centers.
And it follows repeated claims of ill treatment at Yarl’s Wood. It also came shortly before an official UN inspector investigating state-run detention centers for women was banned by the UK Home Office from entering Yarl’s Wood, which houses about 400 women.
On Saturday, it emerged that a controversial multimillion-pound program of support for Bahrain’s security and justice system was being bolstered by a further £2m of British funding, despite the Persian Gulf state reversing reforms to an intelligence agency accused of torture.
Meanwhile, documents obtained by the legal charity Reprieve reveal that officials from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons visited Bahrain and helped prepare for an official inspection of the country’s most notorious police station, where a number of inmates have alleged ill treatment.
The inspection of Bahrain’s CID building took place on 24-25 December 2014, leading to a report that ran to only six pages and failed to mention several high-profile allegations of torture.
Now it has emerged that HMIP staff visited Bahrain a fortnight before the inspection, from 7-9 December, “to help PDRC [Prisoners and Detainees Rights Commission] do detailed planning for police custody inspections, finalize a police custody detainees interview questionnaire”.
Reprieve said it was concerned by the failure of the subsequent report to mention high-profile allegations of torture, citing the experiences of a death-row prisoner, Mohammed Ramadan, a father of three. He was tortured for four days at the CID building in March 2014, ultimately making a false confession that was used as the basis of his death sentence. The PDRC inspection report does not mention the allegations despite Ramadan’s jailers being accused of beating him.
