Abdulla Mohsen

Abdulla Mohsen has been in prison now more than four months. What is he accused of? Well apparently he and more than thirty others are accused of being involved in the theft of a weapon and in burning a police jeep. This, if you wll remember, happened way back in December after the protest that accompanied the funeral of Ali Jassem, who died in as yet unclear circumstances after participating in a demonstration on December 17. Dozens of people were arrested, including Abdulla.

According to Abdulla, he is innocent since he wasn’t even present at the scene when the events occured, and he was arrested four days later in his house. Now I know Abdulla personally, and I find it hard to believe that he would even hurt a fly, let alone steal a gun and burn down a jeep. He is however an activist. Given the amount of activists that have been rounded up under the pretext of the theft of the weapon, it is not completely surprising that he was arrested under the same pretext as well . He also ran a blog under the name of Bahrain Eyes.

In any case, several sources indicated that Abdulla’s health situation is a constant worry. Apparently he is suffering from severe kidney problems, and his family are very worried about his situation. At one point he even had to be moved to the hospital due to his deteriorating health. His family have been kept in the dark with minimal information about his status or whereabouts.

The situation is very depressing. There are several reports of torture and beatings of the detainees. There isn’t much that we can do except bring attention to Abdulla’s and the rest of the detainees’ plight. Other than the Arabic forums, there has been very little coverage or discussion online about their situation, unlike previous cases of bloggers being arrested or brought to prosecution. If you have a blog or a forum or even a contact somewhere, I ask you that you please write about them, put a post up, or at least raise their issue. This is the least we can do, as one can only imagine what they are going through.