Bahrain Live Coverage: Activist Zainab Alkhawaja Gets 1-Month Sentence
Thursday, May 24, 2012 at 15:32
Scott Lucas in Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, Bahrain, EA Middle East and Turkey, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, Middle East and Iran, Naziha Saeed, Zainab Alkhawaja

See also Egypt, Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Day 2 of a Presidential Election
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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)

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