Dubai: Amnesty International has urged Bahrain to investigate whether riot police used excessive force in the shooting of an anti-government protester accused of taking part in riots in a Shiite village.
The London-based rights group said the protester, Hassan Ali, was shot on Monday in disputed circumstances the same day that Bahrain's Attorney General said clashes between villagers and policemen resulted in a police car being set alight.
"He is suffering from 12 different gunshot wounds all over his body, including three in his head," the Bahrain Human Rights Society said, adding that Ali had been moved to a military hospital and demanding he be returned to an intensive care unit. Local media reports said Ali would be remanded in police custody for one month.
"The authorities need to establish whether he [Ali] was the victim of excessive force, in which case the police officer who shot him and any others responsible for the use of excessive force should be held to account," Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Programme Director, said in a statement posted on Amnesty's website.
"Police are entitled to use force, including firearms, in certain, narrowly prescribed circumstances when their own or others' lives are at risk, but the allegations here are that Hassan Ali was shot while he was posing no threat."
Police said that on the day Ali was shot, they were conducting a routine patrol in the Shiite village of Karzakan when they came under attack by masked youths and eventually had to disperse the crowd with gunfire.
