(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - Haider Mohamed al-Noaimi, subject of a McClatchy story two weeks ago, was released after about a month in jail. "I cannot believe I am free," he saod Sunday night by telephone from Bahrain. "I wish everybody else was."
Noaimi, 26, was widely known as a voice of moderation in the standoff between the Sunni-led minority government, which invited in troops from Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and the majority Shiite population. True to his reputation, his first words to the outside world were conciliatory.
"The biggest challenge for Bahrain is to go back to the way it was," he said., "when we were all together, and when there were no problems between Sunnis and Shiites." His wife Sajeda said Noaimi had lost a lot of weight in prison, and returned with long hair and a beard.
She noted marks on his hands indicating he had been beaten but said he was in high spirits.
The secret trial for the mid-March deaths of two policemen has been widely criticized for the apparent lack of due process. The defendants were accused of driving vehicles into two policemen and then mutilating the bodies by driving over them again and again.
A video purporting to show the killing was played on state-controlled television while the trial was still under way, and was used as prime evidence during the proceedings against the defendants, Rajab said.
One of those accused died in detention, although his confession, likely to have been obtained under extreme coercion, was included in the official televised "documentary" on the case. But the demeanor of every defendant shown confessing on the program raised questions about whether anything they said was not under duress.
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