Photograph: HANDOUT/Reuters
Updated midday: A US journalist and three members of her film crew who were arrested in Bahrain on Sunday (14 February) have been released after being charged with “illegal assembly with the intent to commit a crime.”
An Associated Press report quoted Bahrain police as saying the four were detained for providing “false information that they were tourists”.
And the country’s chief prosecutor, Nawaf al-Awadi, said an investigation was sparked by the journalists’ possession of cameras and computers while covering a demonstration to mark the fifth anniversary of protests that were put down violently in 2011.
Anna Day, a freelance documentary maker, who has previously made films in Egypt and Gaza was the only one of the four identified. She has also been a contributor to the Huffington Post and the Daily Beast.
The Arabic-language Mira’at al-Bahrain (Bahrain Mirror) said the four were detained in a village near Bahrain’s capital, Manama, during clashes between Shia demonstrators and security forces.
Bahrain’s interior ministry issued a statement saying police had detained four foreign nationals who were suspected of entering Bahrain illegally by “having submitted false information to border staff, and participating in an unlawful gathering.”
Hundreds of young people had gathered on the streets in Bahrain on the fifth anniversary of Arab spring protests, mainly by members of the Shia majority demanding reforms and a bigger share in the Sunni-led government. Police fired tear gas and used rubber bullets.
Day is an experienced reporter. It is not clear whether she and her team were on assignment for any particular news outlet.
Two press freedom groups, Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), called for the release of the four.
“It is sad that the fifth anniversary of the 2011 protests has been marked by the arrest of yet more journalists in Bahrain, which has since become one of the worst jailers of journalists in the Arab world,” said CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa programme coordinator Sherif Mansour.
The CPJ noted that at least six other journalists are currently imprisoned in Bahrain in connection with their work. The Bahraini government has frequently equated reporting on protests and attacks on police with participating in them.
Earlier this month, Bahraini photographer Ahmed al-Fardan began serving a three-month prison sentence on charges of participating in an illegal protest, according to his lawyer and news reports.
The US fifth fleet is based in Bahrain.
Source: Associated Press via New York Times/Al-Jazeera/Reuters/abc.news/CPJ/The Guardian
