diplomatic relations and direct travel and guards’ efforts to force them back into their trade links by the end of the year. cells, the OHCHR found that the level of force RIGHT TO HEALTH used was excessive and unjustified. Prison guards struck detainees on the head with From late 2020, Bahrain provided free batons and in some cases beat detainees Covid-19 vaccines for nationals and legal until they were bleeding severely. residents, but the estimated 70,000 undocumented migrants were ineligible as DETAINEES’ RIGHTS they lacked a valid Bahraini ID. Prisoners, In April, Jaw prison administration who became eligible for vaccination in confiscated a manuscript on Bahraini dialect February, complained that they were not told written by AbdulJalil al-Singace, one of the which vaccine was being offered so they leaders of the peaceful protests imprisoned could not make an informed medical since 2011, when he asked a fellow prisoner decision. being released to deliver the manuscript to A rolling outbreak of Covid-19 in Bahrain’s his family. On 8 July, AbdulJalil al-Singace 4 central prison at Jaw lasted from March to began a hunger strike in protest. June. The interior ministry acknowledged three cases, but relatives of prisoners told CHILDREN’S RIGHTS Amnesty International in April that scores of The new Corrective Justice Law for Children, prisoners were infected.1 which came into effect in August, expands In June, Jaw inmate Husain Barakat died of children’s procedural rights in court. complications after contracting Covid-19, However, child defendants’ rights were still despite having been vaccinated. His wife told not fully respected in practice. Amnesty International that he had told her he In February, interior ministry investigators could not breathe and that the guards had detained 16-year-old Sayed Hasan Ameen not heeded his requests to be transferred to and separated him from his parents before hospital until he was too weak to walk. interrogating him without a lawyer or relative Throughout the year, other than offering present. The Office of Public Prosecution, vaccination, the prison administration failed acting in part based on this interrogation, to take Covid-19 preventative steps such as included him as one of four children aged distributing masks and sanitizers, and social under 18 who were tried on charges of arson distancing remained impossible due to and throwing Molotov cocktails under the 2 overcrowding. same procedural conditions as adults, in breach of Bahrain’s obligations under the TORTURE AND OTHER ILL-TREATMENT 5 Convention on the Rights of the Child. In As in past years, detainees and their families March, following public outcry, the court gave accounts of torture in state detention released the four children under an centres. In January, Sheikh Zuhair Jasim alternative sentence of attending a six-month Abbas was finally allowed to call his family rehabilitation programme.6 after five months’ incommunicado detention IMPUNITY in Jaw prison. He told relatives that during this period prison guards had tortured him, Implementation of the right to a remedy using methods including sleep deprivation, remained inadequate and non-transparent. threatening that he was about to be The Special Investigation Unit (SIU), a executed, and beating with fists, feet and branch of the Office of Public Prosecution, hoses.3 stated that it had received reports of torture In April, Jaw prison authorities violently and other ill-treatment, but did not report broke up a protest by prisoners following the how many. It said it referred seven members death in custody of prisoner Abbas MalAllah. of the security forces for criminal prosecution Alhough some prisoners violently resisted for unauthorized use of physical force, and Amnesty International Report 2021/22 84