Human Rights Watch: Bahrain arbitrarily detains 6 children in an orphanage

The Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy and Human Rights Watch announced that the Bahraini authorities are holding six children between the ages of 14 and 15 in a child care center.
The authorities did not give these children or their families any written justification for their detention for weeks, and refused the families’ requests to be present during the interrogation or visit of their children.
The children, who are from Sitra, were detained by order of the Attorney General’s office at Batelco’s Child Care facility in Seef District, which a government website describes as “an institution for the care of children of orphans up to the age of fifteen.”
“Last year Bahrain touted its legal reforms for children, but locking children in an orphanage instead of a prison isn’t an improvement when their detention is already arbitrary,” said Bill Van Esveld, associate director of the Children’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch. This is a test for respecting children’s rights in Bahrain, and the Bahraini authorities have failed this test so far.”
The Public Prosecution summoned the children, who are from three families, for the first time for questioning in June 2021.
Some were interrogated at least eight times, sometimes held overnight in a police station, before their arrest, according to parents from two families.