Bahraini prison water supply cut off for days: Rights group

Guards at Bahrain’s Jaw Prison have cut off water in the notorious penitentiary for days and deprived the inmates of taking shower and using toilets as the authorities presses ahead with its heavy-handed crackdown against opposition figures and pro-democracy activists in the Gulf kingdom.

 

Guards at Bahrain’s Jaw Prison have cut off water in the notorious penitentiary for days and deprived the inmates of taking shower and using toilets as the authorities presses ahead with its heavy-handed crackdown against opposition figures and pro-democracy activists in the Gulf kingdom.

The Bahrain Forum for Human Rights (BFHR) said in a statement on Saturday that the only means of hygiene in the prison was water, which prison officers “intentionally shut off for three consecutive days last week.”

The BFHR statement added that Jaw Prison guards also refused to provide the inmates with adequate food portions.

The rights group also pointed to the practice of intentional negligence when detainees sought medical attention from prison authorities, arguing such conduct had resulted in the deterioration of the health condition of many political detainees, including Elias Mullah, who is being denied adequate treatment for his colon cancer.

Hundreds of inmates are kept in the Jaw Prison, Bahrain’s central detention facility, for their participation in peaceful pro-democracy rallies.