Bahrain Embassy protester: I was on the point of becoming Khashoggi #2

A human rights activist, who protested on the roof of the Bahraini Embassy in London, has detailed his harrowing experience with embassy staff and their attempt to make him the ‘second Jamal Khashoggi’.

News ID: 446479

Date: 10 August 2019 - 12:07

RNA - A human rights activist, who protested on the roof of the Bahraini Embassy in London, has detailed his harrowing experience with embassy staff and their attempt to make him the ‘second Jamal Khashoggi’.

Two weeks after the July 26th incident in London, Moosa Abd-Ali spoke for the first time with media regarding his protest at the Bahraini Embassy and his fear of becoming a ‘second Jamal Khashoggi’.

According to The Guardian newspaper, Abd-Ali said that while standing over the five-storey Belgravia building of the Bahraini Embassy, staff members tried to push him off the roof and beat him with a long stick.

The man who was brandishing a weapon said, “We will execute two people in Bahrain and you will be the third.” Another staff member said that no one would come to his aid because he was on ‘Bahraini soil’.

On July 26, Abd-Ali managed to scale the Bahrain Embassy and reach the rooftop, in order to protest the imminent execution of two men in the Persian Gulf nation, set for the following morning.

Speaking of the encounter, the protester said that he believed he could have become “a second Jamal Khashoggi, in London,” comparing himself to the Saudi journalist murdered by the country’s agents at its embassy in Turkey.

“At that moment I thought he (the staffer with the weapon) was throwing me {off} down the ceiling and because no one sees him doing it, it would look like I was accidentally falling down,” Abd-Ali said.

He further said that the two embassy staff members lowered him to the ground and tried to strangle him with a t-shirt.

The ordeal ended when British police and the fire brigade took the unusual step of forcing entry into the embassy.

On the roof of the embassy, ​​the Bahraini activist urged new British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, to contact the King of Bahrain to prevent the executions.

However, as expected, London as the main supporter of the Bahraini regime in the West, not only refused to take steps to halt the executions, but British police arrested the protester and transferred him to jail upon entering the Bahraini Embassy building.

The regime in the tiny Persian Gulf kingdom carried out the death sentences as scheduled despite fierce protests by the United Nations and several human rights organisations.

Since February 2011, the Bahraini people have been holding peaceful protest rallies on a regular basis, demanding that the Al Khalifah family relinquish power and let a just system, representing all citizens, be established.

They have also been complaining about widespread discrimination against the country's Shia majority.

Manama has responded to the demonstrations with an iron fist. The authorities have detained rights campaigners, broken up major opposition political parties, revoked the nationality of several pro-democracy activists and deported those left stateless.

In March, 2011, troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were deployed to assist Bahrain in its crackdown.

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