Bahrain frees detainees

Bahrain has released a group of detainees, including two former members of parliament, charged over anti-government protests in the Gulf state earlier this year, opposition sources and state media said yesterday. Those released included Jawad Fairouz and Matar Ibrahim Matar, former MPs from the kingdom’s largest Shia opposition group Al-Wefaq, a member of the bloc said. “I saw them and embraced them,” said Al-Wefaq member Sayed Hadi al-Mousawi. The bloc’s MPs quit parliament after Bahrain called in troops from other GCC states to help tackle the Shia-led protests in February and March. Bahrain has sentenced eight opposition members to life imprisonment over the protests. Bahrain’s state news agency quoted the public prosecutor  as saying a decision had been taken to release some detainees whose cases were transferred from a military tribunal to civilian courts for review. It referred to the MPs, who pleaded not guilty last month to spreading false news and joining illegal gatherings, as well as to previous releases of defendants who had been detained for a period equivalent to possible jail sentences. It did not specify how many cases might continue. The head of an international lawyers’ commission which Bahrain has asked to investigate the protests, the crackdown and its aftermath told Reuters on Thursday that he expected the release of about 150 detainees. More than 1,000 people were detained in the crackdown and at least four of them died in custody. The commission follows a state-organised “National Dialogue” over the protests. That process proposed last month expanding the powers of the elected parliament, a move Bahrain’s king approved while preserving the dominance of an upper house picked by his court.