Human Rights Watch has accused Bahrain’s police of continuing to beat and torture detainees, including minors. The report comes nearly six months after an independent inquiry prompted the government to pledge reforms. The country insists it is committed to putting the recommendations of its own report into the handling of protests in 2011 into practice. [...]

Double standards have notoriously marked Britain and America’s response to the Arab Spring. But nowhere is the hypocrisy more glaring than in their reactions to the uprisings in Bahrain and Syria, where both countries’ governments have used the full might of their security forces to crush peaceful protests and jail and torture their opponents. When [...]

Within the first few months of 2011, the U.S. and its allies lost three loyal “friends”: Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Zine el-Abbidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Saad Hariri in Lebanon. While Mubarak and Ali were driven out of power by widespread popular uprisings, Hariri was ousted by the parliament. Inspired by these liberating developments, [...]

Mobs with iron rods and sticks ransacked a supermarket belonging to a major Shiite-owned business group, as part of a spike in violence in the Gulf nation in retaliation for a bomb attack on police. The attack appeared linked to a wave of reprisals and intimidation by suspected Sunni groups angered by the 14-month-old uprising [...]

The U.S.-backed monarchy in Bahrain continues the crackdown on protesters, with reports of many injuries and at least one death over the weekend. We speak to Zainab Alkhawaja, the daughter of jailed human rights leader Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, who is now on the 54th day of his hunger strike. Doctors say her father could go into [...]

Cairo – Bahrain has spiraled into escalating violence on the streets in recent days, several weeks after an independent commission report into last year’s violence was released in November. On Saturday police and pro-government supporters clashed with hundreds of mourners in Muharraq, north of the Bahraini capital Manama, as they marched in the funeral of [...]

Sipping tea in a smoky Damascus cafe, Adnan and his wife, Rima, look ordinary enough: an unobtrusive, thirtysomething couple winding down at the end of the working day in one of the tensest cities in the world. But like much else in the Syrian capital, they are not what they first seem: normally, he is [...]

Syria’s military has pulled its tanks and heavy weapons out of cities and residential areas, the Arab League said, though it admitted security forces continue to fire on and kill unarmed protesters. In a news conference at its headquarters in Cairo, Nabil Elaraby defended the league’s monitoring mission. Human rights groups have accused the body [...]

An Arab League advisory body has called for the immediate withdrawal of the organisation’s monitoring mission in Syria, saying it is allowing Damascus to cover up violence and abuses. The Arab League has a small team in Syria checking whether President Bashar al-Assad is keeping his promise to end a crackdown on a nine-month uprising [...]

Syrian security forces killed eight more protesters and an Arab League organization urged Arab monitors to leave Syria, saying unrelenting bloodshed made a mockery of their mission. For more on this story, visit: Syria bloodshed defies Arab monitor mission | Reuters.