Bahrain Protesters Clash With Police Near Capital After Teenager’s Funeral

Hasan Jamali/Associated Press

A Bahraini man carries a youth overcome by tear gas in Abu Saiba, Bahrain, west of the capital, Manama.

By J. DAVID GOODMAN

Published: October 7, 2011

Security forces clashed with demonstrators along a central highway west of Bahrain’s capital, Manama, on Friday, in what appeared to be among the largest protests in months.

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The Interior Ministry acknowledged that security forces had moved to clear the area, but it blamed “vandals” for blocking the highway after the funeral of a teenager who activists said was killed by police officers the day before. “This led to interference of security forces to bring the situation to normal,” it said in a statement.
The clashes, which did not lead to any deaths, followed a week in which the government of Bahrain took steps to present a less punitive approach to antigovernment protesters. On Wednesday, the government’s top prosecutor nullified harsh prison terms, handed down last week, for medical workers accused of antigovernment activities, ordering those in custody to be freed pending retrials.
The prosecution of the medical workers had become a symbol of the government’s tough response to a wave of protests in the spring and had attracted negative international attention.
The protest appeared, from video posted online by Shiite activists, to be much larger than the small demonstrations that have occurred regularly since March, and it was the second time in two months that activists blamed the police for the death of a teenager.
In late August, a 14-year-old-boy died as security forces in Sitra, a restive village to the south of the capital, broke up a small protest. Witnesses said he had been hit in the chest by a tear gas canister.
The authorities identified the teenager killed on Thursday as Ahmed Jaber, 16, and said they had opened an investigation into his death, according to a report by the official Bahrain News Agency.
Rights activists said he had been part of a protest near the capital on Thursday when he was shot in the chest at close range by police officers with birdshot — used to contain crowds — and killed. The Bahrain Center for Human Rights posted a graphic image on its Web page that was said to show Ahmed just after his death, his chest riddled with small, round wounds.
The state news agency said the Interior Ministry would investigate conflicting accounts of his death, including “a report by forensic experts of the Public Prosecution indicating that the death was the result of an injury by a police birdshot” — similar to what the activists described — and another report from the Bahrain International Hospital, where he had been taken, which attributed his death “to a severe drop in the blood circulation and the respiratory system that led to heart failure.”
The mourners accompanying the body on Friday, members of the country’s Shiite majority, pumped their fists and chanted slogans against the Sunni-led government, according to video images posted online. Many carried the red and white flags of Bahrain, an important American ally and host to the United States Fifth Fleet’s naval base.
After the funeral had broken up, activists said the police began using tear gas and sound grenades to disperse the crowd, as protesters lingered on the central highway. Al Jazeera reported that at least four people were injured. There were also reports of gunfire, though it was unclear what type of bullets were being used.
Video posted by LuaLua TV, an independent Arabic-language station in Bahrain, showed protesters massing near security forces as a gaseous haze hung over the highway. Other video, posted by activists, showed young men, holding stones, heading in the direction of security forces firing tear gas.