Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government when they last carried out an independent assessment of the effectiveness of the oversight bodies in Bahrain, including the Ombudsman and the National Institute for Human Rights; and what were the findings of that assessment.
We believe that the oversight bodies in Bahrain, including the Ministry of Interior Ombudsman, are structured so that they are able to operate independently from the organisations that they oversee. While these bodies still have more to do, they have already demonstrated their abilities including through the prosecution of more than 90 police officers accused of human rights abuses.