The night preceding my arrest, the police raided the house of a nurse-assistant of the Green Jackets who worked in Salmaniya Hospital. His name was Ebrahim Al-Demistani. They mistook him for me. So jokingly I used to call him 'Ebrahim Al-Demistani the Duplicate' or the scapegoat. The other scapegoat was the pediatrician Dr. Sadeq Jaafar who was arrested and charged of operating on martyr Ali Al-Momen's body, although the doctor who performed the operation was the consultant of lung surgery, blood vessels and kidney transplant Sadeq Abdulla. Similarity of names brought agony to their holders. They were taken without any justification, and after that there would not be any apology to them; even it was done deliberately later.

After about a week of our confession under torture and signing on documents they asked us to, they took us to the Dry Dock prison at one after midnight. The detainees were of all kinds: doctors, bloggers, photographers, activists on Internet forums, computers specialists, students from the University of Bahrain, and Al-Areen group detainees. There were detainees accused of the "Tongue Laceration" case, that proved to be false through their judiciary system. Manama detainees were there as well. Manama detainees were brought three months after we had been there.

They took us to ward 5, the warden started checking us, he asked us: "Do you have anything?" They checked our bodies and checked if we had injuries. He saw bruises on my leg and blood dripping. He photographed it and made a report to absolve themselves of any responsibility of beating or marks of injuries. It happened that torture had ceased since that day afternoon. It was because of the martyrdom of Zakariya Al-Asheeri and Ali Saqr on 9 April 2011.

When I entered Cell 7 I saw people, but was not able to recognise them. The blindfold had just been lifted from our eyes. Our vision was blurred, for that I was not able to recognise the orthopedic consultant Dr. Basem Dhaif, it was for another reason as his head was shaved. He was lying down, exhausted of torture, everyone was like that. Ebrahim Al-Demistani the Duplicate, Mahmood Al-Qatari and Emad Al-Osfoor both were activists on Interent forums. All of them were exhausted of pain and puss and were not able to stand up to shake hands. They just made gestures of that.

Dr Dhaif's vision was severely affected more than us as he had used spectacles. He warned his mates in the cell to talk carefully lest they be filmed by the camera installed in the door. He used to say to them: "Don't get close to me, don't talk to me, there is a surveillance camera". He thought of the door lock as a camera. That was the situation!

Due to my injury, I was taken to the clinic of the Dry Dock prison. I was blindfolded as well as handcuffed. As long as I was with the doctor I was supposed to live in mercy, however, the intelligence agents who accompanied us during those visits prevented the doctors from that. They honoured us by insults and beatings. On our second day in the Dry Dock prison, a plain-clothed officer came and ordered that I should be taken to hospital. He left me the option either to go to the Military Hospital or the Fortress Hospital. I chose the latter as I knew the place and the availability of medicines in it.

The Dry Dock prison is located in a desert place. It has different facilities. After the main gate, the car would move a distance of about a half kilometre. You would see to the left scattered cabins dedicated for the visits. After them you would see new wards concentrated at the corner. On the right there were six wards filled with prisoners. Ward 1 for immigration detainees. Ward 2 for drug detainees. Ward 3 for the political detainees brought from the police stations. Ward 4 for non-political detainees brought from the police stations. We were taken to Ward 5 then Ward 6. Those two wards for the detainees brought from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID). 

The clinic was located to the left of that road. The clinic was the closest to Ward 5. Sun shelters extended from the roofs of Ward 5 and 6 to the clinic roof. In front of the clinic, there was a playfield where the detainees from the various wards were allowed to stroll at. When you moved in the playfield and when those six wards were behind you, you could see other five wards in front of you. In those wards the state security detainees were kept. Sheikh Mohammed Ali Al-Mahfoodh the secretary general of Amal political society and the activists in that society were kept in that ward before they were transferred to Jow prison after their trials. There was a sixth ward which was reserved for the detainees of the military police. 

Dry Dock prison

Once you enter Ward 5, you would see a small opening which was used to communicate and give orders. When you enter the lobby you see on the right a hair dressing room. In the right corner of that room there were a table and a mirror in front of it, and chair for the detainee whose hair to be cut. Hair dressing took place once a week. There was a long bench that could accommodate three people. Above it a couple of shelves full of copies of Holy Quran. Opposite to the door stood a tall oven, with multiple shelves for warming and baking. The fridge was at the left corner.

On the left of the lobby there was the police office. When you entered you would see the on-duty policeman sitting at his desk. On his left there were shelves that were used to put the switched off mobile phones to avoid filming anything there. The fridge was at the left corner and at the other corner the toilet door. Then you saw the main gate with its iron bars that led to the internal part of the ward. The view through the iron bars took you to a narrow corridor. 

The ward had seven cells that were numbered from left to right in a zigzag fashion. So the odd numbers were to the left and the even were to the right. 

The cells doors were made of metal bars like the animal cages, with a little wider space. Although the doors were not opposite each other, but they allowed us to see each other and exposed the movement in the corridor. Cells 6 and 7 had small windows in their doors as they were adjacent to the bathrooms. Those two were at the end of the ward. After them you would find the bathrooms and the toilets. The shower rooms were on the right and the toilets were on the left. All of them were squatting toilets with the exception of one which was a seated toilet devoted for the sick who suffered back pain. 

After that there were the washing basins on both sides. At the end there was a door that led to outside of the ward where there was a sheltered yard that extended to the back end of ward 6. At that sheltered area behind the two wards, there were cloths lines. That area was used for smoking as well.

In that ward, the medics were distributed over its seven cells. Every 10 detainees were in one cell. The cell was about 3×4 metres. Upon entry to the cell, you would usually find the door in the middle, two beds on the right and three beds on the left. All the beds were double-decked. We used to sleep on mattresses that we rolled onto the floor. Later those mattresses were changed to rise above the floor after the improvement of Bassiouni's visits.

At the top of the wall there was an air conditioner. At the utmost left there was a small barred window where light or air would filter through and sometimes birds sounds, as well as calls for prayers voice. The strange thing was that I felt that voice was similar to the warden's one. I did not stomach any thing that came from the prison administration. That was what I, at least, personally felt. 

 

We were distributed over the seven cells as follows:

Cell 1: Dr. Ali Al-Ekri, a group of computer activists, detainees of Al-Areen group and others of different cases.

Cell 2: Consultant of plastic surgery Dr. Abdulshaheed Fadhl, the Resident Doctor Abudlla Al-Durazi, ambulance supervisor Sayed Marhoon Al-Wadaie, ambulance driver Abdulhussein Al-Ghanami, a couple of detainees of Al-Areen group and others.

Cell 3: Consultants of jaw surgery Dr. Aaref Rajab and Dr. Ghassan Dhaif, Dr. Abdulkhaleq Al-Oraibi, family doctor Dr. Ahmed Al-Omran, and some ambulance drivers.

Cell 4: Dr. Saeed Al-Samaheeji, Younes Aashoori the manager of Muharraq Maternity Hospital and others from Al-Areen group.

Cell 5: Dr. Nader Diwani, pharmacist Ali Jaafar, some of Al-Areen group, Hani Abo Abbas who was a designer of a website named Al-Manar that published Lebanese Hezbollah news which led the authorities to think that he was connected to Hezbollah.

Cell 6: Dr. Basem Dhaif, Dr. Mahmood Asghar, consultant of brain surgery Dr. Nabeel Hameed, a group of ambulance drivers, a group of Internet forums activists and others.

Cell 7: Myself, Ebrahim Al-Demistani the Duplicate, Dr. Basem Dhaif who later was moved to Cell 6, an ambulance drivers Ameer Al-Hamali,Hussein Al-Safim the nurse assistant Hamza Al-Jamri, Dr. Sadeq Abdulla, Dr. Sadeq Jaafar, consultant of intensive care Dr. Hassan Al-Tublani, Emad Al-Osfoor the manager of company that designed Bahrain Gate website, Mahmood Al-Qatari a high school student who dealt in selling web space unofficially. 

 

 

After lifting National Security law, and after the release of the medics of misdemeanour cases on 28 June, as well as releasing other prisoners, we were moved to Ward 6. The number of the medics detainees dropped from 28 to 11. They put us in two cells. The layout of that Ward was little bit different. In Ward 5 the doors were iron bars, while in this ward the doors were ordinary, and had small windows of 10×6 inches. Every cell had its own bathroom. And after the Bassiounian improvements, a cold drinking water tap was installed.

Later I was taken with Dr. Ali Al-Ekri, Dr. Nader Diwani and phamacist Ali Jaafar to Cell 1. There was also Mustafa from Al-Areen group and Jaafar Al-Nakkal who was accused of helping his brohter-in-law for ordering a wench to his car on the day Sitra area had been attacked. Later Younes Aashoori joined us (before he was tried and transferred to Jow prison). He was in Cell 3, but he got suffocated of the depressed detainees there, so he escaped them for a better morale as he put it.

Cell 2 had Dr. Hassan Al-Tublani, Dr. Basem Dhaif, Dr. Ghassan Dhaif, Dr. Mahmood Asghar, Dr. Abdulkhaleq Al-Oraibi, Dr. Ahmed Al-Omran, ambulance supervisor Sayed Marhoon, and Sayed Hadi who was accused of transporting the injured in his private car.

Dr. Saeed Al-Samaheeji was in Cell 3 with other detainees. It got empty at the last days of the month of Ramadhan and was reserved for TV. There we met Bassiouni. The other detainees were distributed over the other seven cells. We came to know, but in a relatively late time, that that ward was dedicated for female convicts. We knew that from their underwear that they had left there.