Bahrain Mirror (Exclusive): The British Independent newspaper said that "Saudi Arabia has appointed a Bahraini national accused of overseeing torture and unfairly sentencing Arab Spring protesters to lengthy jail terms to investigate human rights violations caused by coalition bombing in Yemen."

"Colonel Mansour Al-Mansour, a military lawyer, has been appointed as a legal adviser to the Saudi-led Joint Incident Assessments Team (JIAT) into air strikes that have killed thousands of civilians, including the bombing of a funeral hall last month that killed 140 people, MEMO reports," said the newspaper.

Al-Mansour was one of the National Safety Court's judge that issued life-imprisonment sentences against opposition leaders in Bahrain (April 2011).

The Independent indicated "The colonel gained notoriety in dealing with protesters in the wake of the Arab Spring in Bahrain in 2011, running a tribunal which prosecuted hundreds of non-violent pro-democracy protesters, academics, writers and journalists, often handing down life imprisonment sentences," adding that "Dozens of those he sentenced allege torture and sexual assault while they were detained, which they say Colonel Al-Mansour ignored."

For its part, the Middle East Monitor website stated that "Al-Mansour is playing a key role in assessing whether human rights violations have taken place in Yemen."

"Amongst Al-Mansour's notorious convictions are the so-called "Bahraini Thirteen", a group of activists, journalists and politicians who alleged torture, including sexual assault and beatings, during their detention. Several media and foreign human rights monitors were barred from observing their trial, the conduct of which drew strong criticism from the United Nations, European Union, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International," the website continued.

The MEMO said "Al-Mansour has since specialized in humanitarian law and attended training sessions from the Bahraini Red Crescent Society and the International Committee for the Red Cross, as well as advising his country's Shura (Consultative) Council in March, on whether to adopt the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. This includes bans on dangerous unexploded ordinance, incendiary devices and other bombs "deemed to be excessively injurious or to have indiscriminate effects." Before the council approved the accession, Al-Mansour reassured legislators that the convention would not apply to the use of weapons within the kingdom."

It is to mention that the convention is actually a watered-down version of the international treaty on "cluster bombs"; Bahrain currently refuses to sign this.

Harsh Sentences against Prominent Dissidents

Religious leader Mirza Al-Mahroos, who was convicted by Al-Mansour to fifteen years in prison, said that he was "unable to stand due to the severity of what had happened to me." This was a reference to the alleged daily torture and beatings during his pre-trial detention; on one occasion, he claimed that an interrogator stuffed shoes into his mouth. "I could not look at [the judges] because of the beatings on my eyes," he recalled.

According to Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, the Director of Advocacy at the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, Al-Mansour sentenced protesters vindictively on behalf of the Bahraini regime. "Rather than being held accountable," he told MEMO, "Al-Mansour has been promoted to whitewash the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. His story is a clear marker of the descent of Bahrain and the Gulf further into dictatorship and authoritarianism."

Others convicted by Al-Mansour include Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, a human rights activist and co-founder of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, as well as the academic and writer Abduljalil Al-Singace, who was arrested initially on his return from Britain where he attended an event in the House of Lords in parliament in August 2010. Al-Singace was detained for six months before being released at the height of the protests, re-arrested, then sentenced by Al-Mansour to life imprisonment. Both men continue to serve their sentences and have been on several hunger-strikes in protest at their incarceration.

Human Rights Watch called the conduct of the trials "unfair", characterized by "serious due process violations." The organization's official report concluded that "serious abuses included denying defendants the right to counsel and to present a defence, and failure to investigate credible allegations of torture and ill-treatment during interrogation." Those on trial included health workers, with one nurse convicted of "destroying moveable property in furtherance of a terrorist purpose" because she allegedly stepped on a photo of the prime minister.

As concerns have mounted internationally about alleged war crimes committed by the coalition air forces in Yemen, Al-Mansour has played a prominent role in playing down the allegations to local, regional and international media. He appeared in media briefings conducted in Riyadh while wearing civilian clothing.

In August, Al-Mansour claimed that a Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital hit by coalition air strikes had been used as a base by Houthi militias. MSF refuted the story, saying that the tented clinic had been set up in an empty field in a residential neighborhood where many internally displaced people had gathered, noting there had been no air strike, nor any fighting in the area, for several months.

All six incidents investigated by JIAT so far - including the August bombing of a Medecins Sans Frontieres field hospital - have cleared the coalition of wrongdoing.

Human Rights Watch and several other international bodies have called for an independent, rather than Saudi-run investigation to the alleged targeting of civilian infrastructure, and for Western nations to stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations which they say are destined for use in Yemen's 18-month-old civil war.

Arabic Version