DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – A pro-democracy activist said Saturday his wife was beaten and detained for hours in Bahrain after he jumped on a car carrying the island’s king during his recent visit to London.
The experience of Sayed Alwadaei’s wife, Duaa, comes amid a crackdown on dissent in Bahrain, the likes of which has been unseen since its Arab Spring-inspired protests were put down in 2011. Its main Shiite opposition group has been dismantled, while activists have been detained and others have had their citizenship stripped by the country’s Sunni rulers.
Alwadaei was among several protesters outside 10 Downing St. on Wednesday, ahead of British Prime Minister Theresa May meeting with King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. As King Hamad’s black luxury car approached, Alwadaei and others rushed forward, jumping on the car and kicking at it while shouting.
Police briefly detained Alwadaei before letting him ago. Protesters’ shouts of “Down Hamad!” could be heard inside the prime minister’s residence during her meeting with the king.
Later that night, as Alwadaei’s wife and his infant son tried to fly out of Bahrain’s international airport to London, authorities detained them for hours, he said. Police dragged her across the floor “until she agreed to questioning,” he said.
“During the subsequent seven-hour interrogation, a senior official told Duaa Alwadaei that she was being questioned and subjected to a travel ban because of her husband’s work and issued apparent threats against her family, her husband and her husband’s family,” Sayed Alwadaei said in a statement sent to The Associated Press.
Both Duaa and his infant son, who also holds U.S. citizenship, remain in Bahrain, he said.
The Bahraini government did not respond to a request for comment from the AP on Saturday. The former British colony maintains close relations with the United Kingdom.
Nicolas McGeehan, a Bahrain researcher at Human Rights Watch, criticized the Bahraini government’s “contemptible and cowardly” action in targeting Alwadaei’s wife.
“While King Hamad is receiving the red carpet treatment in the U.K., his goons in Bahrain are terrorizing Sayed Alwadaei’s wife and their infant son,” McGeehan said in a statement.
On Friday, U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said American officials would look into the case of Alwadaei’s son, declining to comment further.
The 2011 protests in Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, called for greater political freedoms on the island for its Shiite majority and others. The government crushed the protests with the help of troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The ensuing years saw low-level unrest, protests and attacks on police until April, when the new crackdown began amid a Sunni Arab pushback against Shiite power Iran. The island just off Saudi Arabia’s coast also faces mounting economic pressure as its oil-dependent economy suffers from depressed global crude prices.
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