MANAMA (Reuters) – A Bahraini Shi’ite Muslim teenager said three men who appeared to be plainclothes detectives abducted him last week, dragged him into a garage and beat him into unconsciousness after he refused to spy on youths involved in clashes with riot police.

Ali Singace’s case has raised questions about rights reform in Bahrain after public prosecutors accused him of filing a false report about the alleged effort by police to force him to work as an informer.

SITRA, Bahrain, March 24 (Reuters) – Bahraini police clashed
with anti-government protesters on Saturday at a Shi’ite town
where residents tried to demonstrate against the Gulf Arab
state’s holding of a Formula One race next month.

Hundreds of riot police backed by dark blue armoured
vehicles and jeeps patrolled the streets of Sitra, a poor
district southeast of Manama where youths threw petrol bombs and
stones at security forces who responded with tear gas canisters,
Reuters witnesses said.

MANAMA (Reuters) – Bahraini protesters battled with riot police near Manama on Friday after the funeral of a woman whose family said she died after tear gas entered her home twice in the past week.

A U.N. rights body this week expressed concern over the use of excessive force and tear gas by Bahraini security forces.

MANAMA (Reuters) – Bahrain is installing video cameras in police stations to try to clean up its human rights image after crushing a pro-democracy uprising last year, but activists say off-camera abuse continues in other locations.

At al-Hoora station in Manama, closed circuit television will record police interrogations in rooms with padded grey walls. Rooms without cameras are set aside for detainees to consult lawyers. Other areas of the station are also monitored.

MANAMA (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia wants Bahrain’s government and opposition to resolve a political crisis that it fears could worsen because of the sectarian fallout of fighting in Syria and destabilize its Eastern Province, a diplomat and opposition politician said.

Bahrain has been in turmoil since the Arab Spring protest movement first erupted a year ago. Clashes have become a daily occurrence, usually in districts populated by majority Shi’ite Muslims who have dominated the protests.

MANAMA (Reuters) – Bahrain will go ahead with the prosecution of 20 medics who treated wounded protesters during an uprising last year, despite a statement suggesting most of the cases would be dropped, the justice minister said on Tuesday.

The prosecution of doctors drew international criticism, with rights groups saying the medics were being punished for helping civilians hurt by state forces during anti-government demonstrations.

MANAMA (Reuters) – Bahrain’s king said on Tuesday his island state had rolled out real reforms in the wake of international criticism of its crackdown on protesters last year but now needed to prove it could put them into practice.

At least 1,000 people were detained when the Sunni Muslim kingdom crushed protests led by its Shi’ite majority demanding curbs to the power of the ruling family, an end to sectarian discrimination and democratic reforms.

DUBAI (Reuters) – The condition of a jailed Bahraini activist who has been on hunger strike for over a month is deteriorating and prison authorities may force-feed him, a lawyer who visited him this week said on Wednesday.

Abdulhadi al-Khawaja is serving a life sentence for his role in a pro-democracy protest movement that erupted in February last year after uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia only to be put down by force one month later.

MANAMA (Reuters) – Bahrain’s main opposition movement Wefaq is making overtures to the monarchy on how to pursue democratic reforms but its efforts may be undermined by waning support from youth who seek more revolutionary change.

Three members of Wefaq, which dominates Shi’ite politics and has taken almost half the seats in parliament in past elections, recently met a prominent member of the ruling Sunni Al Khalifa family to discuss a way forward after a year of unrest following the bloody breakup of protests at the Pearl Roundabout.

DUBAI, March 14 (Reuters) – Bahrain rejected on
Wednesday a new report by an international media watchdog
describing the Gulf Arab state as an “enemy of the Internet”
after it crushed a pro-democracy uprising last year.

“Bahrain offers a perfect example of successful crackdowns,
with an information blackout achieved through an impressive
arsenal of repressive measures,” the Paris-based Reporters
Without Borders (RSF) said in a report published this week.