AhlulBayt News Agency - Seventeen detainees escaped from a prison in Bahrain, police said on Saturday, and the government warned citizens against giving them shelter.
The official Bahrain News Agency said 11 of those who escaped on Friday had since been recaptured, and six remained at large. Five others had also been arrested, it quoted police as saying.
The news agency said Interior Minister Sheikh Rashed bin Abdullah al-Khalifa, chairing a security meeting to review the circumstances of the escape from the Dry Dock Detention Center, warned Bahrainis against harboring the fugitives.
The news agency did not say whether the escapees were prisoners jailed for anti-government demonstrations or attacks, or inmates convicted of ordinary crimes.
Thousands of mainly Shi'ite Muslim Bahrainis are in jail on Alleged charges ranging from participating in anti-government protests to armed attacks on security forces in the Western-allied Gulf kingdom.
Social media users posted at least one photo of a road where traffic was backed up for miles, and said it was caused by police closing roads to search for the prisoners on the run.
Since February 14, 2011, thousands of anti-regime protesters have held numerous protest rallies on an almost daily basis in the tiny oil-rich nation, calling for the Al Khalifa family to relinquish power.
In March of that year, troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were deployed to the country to assist the Bahraini government in its brutal crackdown on the peaceful protests.
Scores of people have been killed and hundreds of others injured or arrested during the crackdown.
Amnesty International and many other international rights organizations have frequently censured the Bahraini regime over the “rampant” human rights abuses against opposition activists and anti-regime protesters.
/129