Press Uncuffed

Plainclothes security officers arrested freelance photographer Ammar Abdulrasool and confiscated his camera during a house raid on July 24, 2014, news reports said. The early-morning raid was one of several in the village of Eker.

Abdulrasool, an award-winning photographer, had captured many iconic images of the popular uprising against the Bahraini government that began in the spring of 2011, including a photograph of a police officer refusing a flower from a protester.

Abdulrasool told his family he was tortured during interrogations about his work as a photographer. According to the news website Bahrain Mirror, Abdulrasool said his interrogators insulted his Shia religion and bound, blindfolded, beat, stripped, and threatened him with sexual molestation and electric shocks.

While Abdulrasool was being held in Dry Dock jail, he said his interrogators sought to force him to confess to these charges while he was under torture, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights reported.

On October 28, 2014, Abdulrasool was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, along with six other defendants, on charges of participating in illegal protests and possessing Molotov cocktails, according to news reports. His lawyer said that evidence of his torture while in government custody was not considered during the trial, the reports said. He was being held in Jaw Central Prison.

In a rare order by the Court of Appeals, Bahraini photographer Ammar Abdulrasool was released on May 4, according to Al-Wasat newspaper. His appeal of his 2-year sentence is ongoing