Torture In Bahrain

EDM number 460 in 1996-97, proposed by George Galloway on 29/01/1997.

That this House notes with concern the urgent action called for by Amnesty International over the eight leaders and religious figures arrested by the authorities in Bahrain on 22nd January 1996, who have now spent more that one year in incarceration without trial and who are being held and are believed tortured under the notorious State Security Law passed in 1974; observes that the Government of Bahrain gave assurances to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in February 1992 that 'there would be no further detentions under the 1974 State Security Act' and that the assurance was relied upon by the British Government in correspondence in August of that year; further notes mounting international concern about the imprisonment without trial of those agitating for a return to constitutional government in Bahrain and the role played by the Head of State Security and by the British mercenary, Ian Henderson, in the torture and murder of demonstrators and detainees; and calls upon Her Majesty's Government urgently to intercede with the Government of Bahrain with a view to ending the excesses of the State Security forces, the use of the State Security Law, which allows prisoners to be held for up to three years without charge, and the State Security Court, within which dozens of prisoners have been sentenced to everything from imprisonment for three years up to life imprisonment and in some cases sentenced to death.

This motion has been signed by a total of 36 MPs.