Hunger Striker ‘Feared Dead’
 

Hunger Striker ‘Feared Dead’
DUBAI, April 9, (AFP): Jailed activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja was feared to have died, his lawyer said on Monday, after Bahraini authorities turned down repeated requests to contact him.

“Authorities have been refusing since yesterday (Sunday) all requests, made by myself and by his family, to visit or contact al-Khawaja,” Mohammed al-Jeshi told AFP.

“We fear that he might have passed away as there is no excuse for them to prevent us from visiting or contacting him,” he said, adding that no information was available on Khawaja’s health.

Jeshi said the last time he contacted Khawaja was on Saturday, a day after he was moved from the interior ministry hospital into a military hospital in Manama.

Khawaja, a Shiite who was condemned with other opposition activists to life in jail over an alleged plot to topple the Sunni monarchy during a month-long protest a year ago, began a hunger strike on the night of February 8-9.

Bahrain’s largest opposition formation Al-Wefaq reiterated its calls for his release on Monday in a statement accusing authorities of “completely ignoring his deteriorating health which has reached a dangerous stage.”
Demonstrations in solidarity with Khawaja have multiplied across the tiny kingdom where youth groups organise almost daily evening protests in Shiite villages.

Bahrain’s national airline Gulf Air, said its page on a social network website was hacked early on Monday. The page was back a few hours later.

Denmark has asked Bahrain to send Khawaja, who is also a Danish citizen, to the Scandinavian country. Bahrain’s official news agency BNA reported Sunday that Manama had turned down the request.

But Danish papers quoted the head of the foreign ministry’s consular service, Ole Engberg Mikkelsen, as saying that “a (formal) reply will come through diplomatic channels and not via a news agency or Twitter.”
Mikkelsen said he did not know when Manama would send its official reply.

“Unfortunately there is not much time. It is a case where the clock is ticking,” he said. “We are continuing our efforts to convince Bahrain that it is in everyone’s interest that he be extradited.”

Front Line Defenders, a Dublin-based NGO, warned that Khawaja could now die in jail, while Al-Wefaq has said refusing a transfer to Denmark amounted to having “signed his death” sentence.

Jailed
Meanwhile, a Bahraini court on Monday jailed 10 Shiites for marching on the capital’s former Pearl Square, the focal point of a month-long uprising crushed last year, a judicial source said.

They were arrested in February during protests marking the first anniversary of the month-long Shiite-led uprising against the Sunni monarchy which was crushed by force in mid-March 2011.

Several marches took off from Shiite villages on the outskirts of Manama on Feb 14 with protesters heading for Pearl Square, where pro-democracy demonstrators had camped out for a month last year before being forcefully driven out.

The square itself was razed after the mid-March crackdown which left 35 people dead, according to an independent commission of inquiry into the violence.
The US State Department said Monday it is in contact with Bahraini authorities over the case of a jailed Bahraini-Danish activist and is urging a “humanitarian solution.”
Mohammed al-Jeshi, the lawyer for the activist, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, told AFP that Khawaja was feared to have died, after Bahraini authorities rejected repeated requests by Jeshi and his family to visit or contact him.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters in Washington that “we are very concerned about the case of Mr al-Khawaja, particularly with regard to his health.”

An explosion injured at least seven Bahraini policemen Monday in an area hit by frequent clashes between security forces and anti-government protesters in the Gulf kingdom, officials said.

Although street battles pitting the Sunni monarchy’s security forces against rock- or firebomb-throwing protesters demanding greater rights for the Shiite majority are an everyday occurrence, targeted attacks with guns or bombs are a rarity.

The country’s Interior Ministry said that explosion occurred in Ekar, a mostly rural area south of the capital Manama. At least three of the policemen received critical injuries, it said.

Nearly 50 people have died in Bahrain’s unrest since February 2011.

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