Investigators in Bahrain said Thursday that an officer from the country’s National Intelligence Agency had been charged in the death of a detainee the government accused of spying for Iran.
In a statement posted on social media, Bahrain’s Special Investigation Unit said that an internal inquiry, drawing on medical records and video evidence, had uncovered the officer’s role in the assault and death of a detainee.
The details of the findings match the case of 32-year-old Sayed Mohammed al-Mousawi.
The unit said the detainee had been arrested under a valid warrant, held by the intelligence agency and beaten by one of its officers. The officer, whom the authorities did not name, admitted to the assault during interrogation, according to the statement. He was charged with assault leading to death.
Bahrain established its Special Investigations Unit in 2012 and gave it a mandate to investigate public officials who abuse, torture or kill civilians in custody. The unit was created after Bahrain’s widely criticized crackdown on pro-democracy protests during a 2011 uprising.
The announcement of the officer’s arrest came after a wave of criticism from rights groups and Mr. al-Mousawi’s family, after his body was returned to his family with injuries suggesting he was tortured, according to three people who said they viewed it.
Bahrain’s royal family are Sunni Muslims, but the majority of the population are followers of Twelver Shiism, a branch of Islam that is also Iran’s state religion. Many Shiites in Bahrain have long complained of discrimination by their government.
The case comes at a tense moment for Bahrain, a small island nation in the Persian Gulf that is a close American ally. Since the United States and Israel began their war against Iran in late February, Bahrain has faced repeated Iranian drone and missile attacks.
The Bahraini authorities have responded with a broad domestic crackdown, detaining dozens of people on accusations that include espionage and “glorifying” attacks against the country.
The Special Investigation Unit’s report on Mr. al-Mousawi’s death offered a stark contrast to the government’s initial account of how he had come to die in official custody.
A death certificate issued by Bahrain’s Health Ministry listed his cause of death as “acute coronary syndrome.” And the Bahrain Ministry of Interior dismissed widely circulated images of his maimed body as “inaccurate and misleading.” It alleged that Mr. al-Mousawi had spied for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Mr. al-Mousawi’s family said he was imprisoned after taking part in the 2011 mass uprising and then released under a royal pardon in 2024.
But on March 19 he went missing, according to a relative. Family members said that security officials initially denied holding him, but eight days later informed them that he had died in custody and that his body was being held in a military hospital morgue.
A joint report by Human Rights Watch and the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy said a medical expert who reviewed footage of Mr. al-Mousawi’s body had found that the injuries were consistent with sustained blunt-force trauma in a controlled setting, making a sudden cardiac event unlikely.
Ismaeel Naar is an international reporter for The Times, covering the Gulf states. He is based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
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