An eleven-year-old Bahraini boy is to stand on Wednesday in a court over his alleged role in “blocking a street.”
At a time when most 11-year-old boys are looking forward to the school holidays, Ali Hasan is preparing for his trial.
On Wednesday morning the primary school pupil from suburban Manama will stand in a Bahrain court and listen as the case against him is spelt out.
The prosecution case: that Ali helped protesters block a street with rubbish containers and wood during demonstrations last month. Ali's defense: that he's a child who was just playing with friends in the street.
Talking with the Guardian by phone from his home in the Bilad al-Qadeem suburb, Ali said: "On the day before I was arrested there was some fighting in the streets near my house between the demonstrators and the police.”
"The demonstrators had blocked the street by setting fire to tyres and using containers in which people dispose of their rubbish.
"The day after this I went to the street with two of my friends to play. It was around 3pm. While we were playing there, some police forces came towards us which made us panic. My friends managed to run away … but I was so scared by the guns they were carrying that I couldn't move … and I was arrested."
Ali has already spent weeks in jail before he was bailed last week, and even sat his exams in prison, the Guardia reported.
After his arrest he was taken to various police stations where he said he was forced to confess to taking part in anti-government demonstrations. "I was crying all the time. I told them I'd confess to anything to go back home," he said.
Ali's father, Jasem Hasan, a car parts dealer, said his son was taken back to the detention centre the day after his arrest.
"I was abroad at the time and when I called Ali's mother was only crying. She was crying for all the time Ali was in prison," he said.
In jail Ali spent a month in a room with three other children and was made to clean the center. "We would wake up early in the morning for breakfast, usually around 6.30, and then I had to do some job," he said.
"The first day in jail was horrible. I cried all the time but I became friends with the other boys there and we could play for four hours every day – but had to spend all our other time in a locked room." Describing the centre, he said: "It's like putting a bear in a box, I felt just like that. I never want to go back to that place again."
