Manama, June 03: Bahrain’s security forces are increasingly targeting women in their campaign against prodemocracy protesters despite Wednesday’s lifting martial law in the island kingdom.
Ayat al-Gormezi , 20, a poet and student arrested two months ago after reading out a poem at a prodemocracy rally, is due to go on trial before a military tribunal , her mother said.
Ayat was forced to turn herself in when masked cops threatened to kill her brothers unless she did so. She has not been seen since her arrest , though her mother did talk to her once by phone and Ayat said that she had been forced to sign a false confession . Her mother has since been told that her daughter has been in a military hospital after being tortured.
“We are the people who will kill humiliation and assassinate misery,” a film captures Ayat telling a cheering crowd in Pearl Square in February. “We are the people who will destroy the foundation of injustice.”
-Agencies