Bahrain

Lord Avebury Excerpts

Wednesday 6th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

Yes, I accept that. It is, in a way, ironic that of the two Gulf states that are making most progress on democratic and parliamentary reform—Kuwait and Bahrain—Bahrain should come in for the criticism. Nevertheless, my noble friend is absolutely right to be concerned about the allegations. Torture is unacceptable to us wherever it occurs in the world; and where it occurs among our friends, the very fact that we have friendship and a good relationship enables us to take the matter up in a very frank and effective way. But the noble Baroness is quite right in this regard.

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, we are very grateful to the Foreign Secretary for making a telephone call to the Crown Prince about the detention and torture of a British citizen who is among the dozens who have been detained for political reasons. Will the Foreign Secretary make another telephone call to ask the Bahraini ruling family if they will grant permission to the families of the detainees to visit them without having 10 security men standing in the background, and allow their lawyers to visit without being observed? Finally, will the Foreign Secretary ask the ruling family to invite the UN rapporteurs on torture and arbitrary detention to pay a visit to Bahrain to investigate the circumstances?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My noble friend is talking about a particular case and it is quite difficult to talk about the details of an individual case where permission has not been given by the individual for it to be discussed. However, if, as I suspect, he is referring to the case of Mr Al-Hisabi, who has been detained and about whom a lot of allegations have been made, this matter was indeed raised at very high levels—whether by telephone or face to face. Consular access has been offered to the individual because he has dual nationality. In the future, there could be further consular access. I am advised that there will be no problem at all about further access and about the issue that my noble friend raised on the position of the families and their support.

As to visits from outside bodies to examine the situation, I agree that this is possibly a worthwhile idea. I am advised that the Bahraini authorities would not be averse to the right kind of inspection or visit from outside authorities to monitor the truth of the allegations—some of which may have a basis and some of which may be false—and to present the Bahraini authorities’ case, which is that there is no real evidence of torture.