Bahraini court orders the continued detention of six children

A Bahraini court headed by Judge Muhammad Al-Maawda has ordered the continued detention of six Bahraini children, whose case has been postponed until Sunday, March 6th.
Five of these children have completed two months of arbitrary detention since their arrest on December 27, and the judge rejected the lawyers’ request to release the children despite undertaking to bring them upon request.
Human Rights Watch and the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD) had previously called for their release.
The two organizations explained that the authorities detained six children between the ages of 14 and 15 in a child care center, and the authorities did not give these children or their families any written justification for their detention for weeks, and refused the families’ requests to attend during the interrogation or visit of their children.
The two organizations called on Bahrain to review Law No. (4) of 2021 regarding restorative justice for children and the protection of children from ill-treatment to clearly stipulate the right of children to have their parents and lawyers present during interrogations, and to challenge their deprivation of liberty.
They also called on the authorities to repeal the law’s provision that children who participate in unauthorized public gatherings may be considered “at risk” and thus deprived of their liberty.