Pro-Government Militias

Pro-Government Militia Website

Documentation for Plainclothes Security Forces

March 13, 2011
The New York Times

On Friday night, as Mr. Gates arrived, security forces firing what protesters said were rubber bullets and pro-government Sunni vigilantes wielding sticks and swords beat back a group of several hundred protesters near the royal palace in Riffa, a residential neighborhood for the ruling family and the Sunni Muslim elite.

March 14, 2011
The International Herald Tribune

There also were clashes at the campus of the main university, with anti-government activists contending that the security forces were protecting armed vigilantes who are fomenting sectarian tensions between the 70 percent of the population who are Shiite and the rul-ing family and elite, who are Sunni.

March 17, 2011
The Irish Times

Ambulances were stopped from reaching villages where police, militia and army had attacked with Apache helicopters. Doctors told how hospitals and health centres were attacked with gunfire, medical staff assault-ed, and the injured and dead removed by state forces.

Militia, believed to be plainclothes police, surrounded Salmaniya hospital in the capital, Manama, and prevented medics from entering or leaving. (...)

State forces then targeted the villages of Sanabis, Daih, Belad and other mainly Shia villages deemed to be supporting the anti-government uprising. There were reports of masked soldiers in civilian clothes raiding homes in Sitra, in the east.

March 18, 2011
The Gazette

"I urge the government not to use force against unarmed protesters, to facilitate medical treatment for the injured, to disarm the vigilante groups, including security officials wearing plain clothes, and I also urge the protesters and the government to engage in imme-diate dialogue for meaningful reforms and an end to violence," Pillay said.
Pillay said her office had received allegations that "automatic weapons may also have been used to shoot live ammunition at protesters and passersby." Plainclothes security personnel had also been seen using "clubs, knives, swords and rocks to attack protesters."

June 20, 2011
The Independent

The government of Bahrain faces fresh allegations that it systematically tortured people it suspected of taking part in demonstrations against its autocratic rulers earlier this year (…) “It's genocide to our people and our hospital doctors and nurses are targeted for helping patients by pro-government militia”

April 2, 2012
The Telegraph

„Ahmed Ismael Abdulsamad was shot in the right thigh on Saturday as he filmed a protest in the Shia village of Salmabad that plainclothes security forces tried to break up with tear gas and rubber bullets.
Opposition groups blamed "militiamen" accompanying security forces fired live bullets at the protesters from a civilian car, hitting Abdulsamad”

April 11, 2012
BBC Monitoring Middle East

Alleged pro-government mobs attacked Shi'i villagers overnight, according to witnesses
"I saw hundreds of men carrying knives, sticks and other sharp objects," on the outskirts of several Shi'i villages, said one man who identified himself only as Hussein.
"They were stopping cars and asking passengers where they lived in order to determine what sect they belonged to," he said by telephone, referring to the Sunni and Shi'i communities in Bahrain.

Al-Wifaq, the Gulf kingdom's largest Shi'i opposition group, said the attackers were in civilian clothes and "beat up" the residents of Shi'i villages.
Amir Jawad, a board member for the Jawad Business Group, said the mob smashed windows and caused other damage to the supermarket in what he called a "systematic" series of attacks. "The vigilantes used iron, steel and wood sticks," he said.
Jawad sites have faced sporadic vandalism since the uprising began in February 2011 in the geographically strategic nation, which is home to the US Navy's 5th Fleet.

March 27, 2014
BBC Monitoring World Media

Now aged 26, Humaydan was arrested on 29 December 2012 after months of continual harassment by the security forces. Around 15 plainclothes policemen took him by force to a detention centre where, handcuffed and blindfolded, he was interrogated for two days and then placed in solitary confinement for the next five days.