Bahrain Live Coverage: Activist Zainab Alkhawaja Gets 1-Month Sentence

See also Egypt, Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Day 2 of a Presidential Election
Wednesday's Bahrain Live Coverage: A March in Sitra

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1640 GMT: A policewoman charged with torturing journalist Naziha Saeed during last year's crackdown on protests will go on trial next month, prosecutors said today.

The unnamed officer is accused of "us[ing] force against the victim to make her confess to a crime". Saeed, the Bahraini correspondent of France 24 and Radio Monte Carlo Doualiya, was arrested on 22 May 2011.

The statement continued, "[The policewoman] beat her and caused her...harm...[by] slapping her, beating her with a plastic tubing, kicking her in all parts of her body, in addition to insulting her."

The first court hearing is set for 6 June.

Saeed recounted her experience earlier this week:

a policewoman asked me 2 imitate donkey's walk&voice, &she sat on me but I fell on the ground cause she s huge &I'm skinny #Bahrain #torture

— nazihasaeed (@nazihasaeed) May 22, 2012

beatings and insults Continued for hours in which they rotate beating by officer &policewomen between me & the nurses #Bahrain #torture

— nazihasaeed (@nazihasaeed) May 22, 2012

1430 GMT: Activist Zainab Alkhawaja has been sentenced to one month in prison for allegedly abusing a policewoman during a demonstration in April.

Alkhawaja is the daughter of the founder of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, who was given a life sentence last June and is on Day 105 of a hunger strike calling for freedom for political prisoners. Arrested on numerous occasions, including once when she was trying to see her father in a military hospital, Zainab Alkhawaja has been held in prison since 21 April.

Yesterday a prison letter from Zainab Alkhawaja, written on 19 May, was released: "If I get released, every village I pass through will shout the names of countless prisoners of conscience. All the walls will show me their faces. Around me, I will see their grief-stricken mothers and fathers, their wives, their children."

0843 GMT: Bahrain. Protesters offer their version of street signs, repeatedly painting on the road, "Down With [King] Hamad".

(Cross-posted from Egypt, Syria, and Beyond Live Coverage)