Bahrain spy agency officer is sentenced to life over in-custody death

A court in Bahrain on Tuesday sentenced a member of the Gulf kingdom’s domestic spy agency to life in prison over the in-custody death of a man arrested during the Iran war.

Bahrain’s state news agency said the ruling came after investigators concluded that the unidentified National Intelligence Service officer was responsible for the man’s death. Prosecutors filed charges in April including “assault resulting in death.”

The public prosecutor’s special investigative unit did not mention the man him by name, but the date of the death lines up with Mohamed al-Mousawi, a 32-year-old Shiite Muslim whose body was returned to his family bearing bruises, burns and cuts, witnesses who saw him at the morgue and his funeral said. A forensic expert with Physicians for Human Rights told The Associated Press that his injuries matched descriptions of blunt force trauma and torture.

Al-Mousawi was among dozens detained or charged for protest expressing support for Iran or espionage-related offenses at the height of the war as Iranian missiles struck Bahrain. The Sunni-ruled, Shiite-majority island nation is home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet. The government has cast the mostly Shiite protesters as Iranian proxies.

Rights groups condemned the campaign of arrests and demanded an investigation into Al-Mousawi’s death.

The Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy on Tuesday called the life sentence inadequate, demanding transparency about the officer and circumstances surrounding Al-Mousawi’s death.

Bahrain’s government has denied any sectarianism, saying authorities have acted lawfully and that independent bodies investigate allegations of abuse.