Bahrain frees minor on trial for protest

A Bahraini juvenile court released on Monday a Shiite minor who is on trial for disturbing security by blocking a road outside the capital, lawyers said. The court ordered police to handover Ali Hasan, 11, to his parents, and adjourned the trial to June 20, a lawyer said, asking not to be named. Hasan was released \"to allow time to review a report on him prepared by a social worker,\" the lawyer added. Hasan, according to the list of charges against him, is accused of \"taking part in a public assembly aimed at disturbing security.\" Bahrain\'s chief prosecutor for juveniles, Noura Al-Khalifa, said in a statement on Sunday that Hasan was arrested on May 14 while blocking a street outside Manama with garbage containers and wood planks. She said he pleaded guilty, admitting that he blocked the road repeatedly after police would clear the blockade, and that he was arrested on his third attempt to shut the road. She claimed he confessed to have done that after a man accused of stirring trouble gave him and some of his friends three dinars ($8). The interior ministry said Hasan was allowed to sit the final school exams in the juvenile detention centre where he was held. Tensions remain high in Bahrain where a month-long Shiite-led uprising was crushed in March 2011. Demonstrations have intensified in recent months as protesters sporadically clash with the police. Amnesty International says 60 people have been killed since the protests first erupted in February last year.