Mazen Mahdi/European Pressphoto AgencyNabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, center, surrounded by protesters and American observers.Bahrain arrested three local human rights activists on Tuesday, along with six Americans who had traveled to the kingdom as part of a private monitoring mission, during a security crackdown on the first anniversary of the country’s protest movement.
As Reuters reports, the authorities detained Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, and the American observers who entered the country last week to work with Witness Bahrain, a project set up by international activists to monitor the policing of demonstrations in the country.
Bahrain’s state news agency reported that the six Americans were deported “for applying for tourist visas under false pretenses.” An immigration official told the agency, “People coming to visit Bahrain need to understand that lying on immigration documents is against the law.”
Two Bahraini activists, Naji Fateel and Hassan Jaber, were also detained with Mr. Rajab after the police fired tear gas at a small group of demonstrators who tried to march to the former site of Lulu Roundabout, or Pearl Square, the focal point of protests last February. (To deny opposition activists a rallying point, the authorities removed the traffic circle last March, and pulled down the pearl monument that had become a symbol of the protest movement.)
Hamad I. Mohammed/ReutersNabeel Rajab, a rights activist, was detained at gunpoint in Bahrain’s capital, Manama, on Tuesday.After Mr. Rajab was released several hours later, he updated his Twitter feed with just one word: “resistance.”
Video posted online by activists showed armored police vehicles patrolling the streets, in the capital and in Shiite villages where support for the protest movement is strong.
Video said to show police vehicles near the former site of the Lulu Roundabout in Manama on Tuesday.Video of Bahrain’s security forces on patrol on Tuesday.According to Reuters, clashes on Monday continued into the early hours of Tuesday, and young men “threw petrol bombs at police cars during skirmishes before dawn, prompting authorities to flood Shiite villages around Manama with police reinforcements backed by helicopters.” Some of the raw video posted online by activists appeared to show a Molotov cocktail landing on a police vehicle.
Late Tuesday, another video clip posted online by activists appeared to show police officers firing tear gas while on patrol in one of the villages.
As it often does, Bahrain’s Interior Ministry referred to opposition protesters as “rioters” on its Twitter feed and focused mainly on the traffic problems caused by the marchers.
Rioters arrested for blocking traffic on SH Khalifa bin Salman Rd. Proper procedures taken to refer them to Pub Prosecution #Bah
— Ministry of Interior (@moi_bahrain) February 14, 2012
