Section:GDN 1N PaGe:9 Edition Date:190808 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 7/8/2019 20:56 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
Thursday 8 August 2019 The Guardian •
National^9
Bahraini dissident in embassy rooftop
protest feared ‘being second Khashoggi’
Dan Sabbagh
Defence and security editor
A Bahraini dissident has said he was
beaten and threatened with being
thrown from the roof of the country’s
embassy in London last month by
staff trying to halt his rooftop protest
against the execution of two men in
the Gulf nation.
Moosa Mohammed said he feared
for his life in the struggle at the top of
the fi ve-storey building in Belgravia,
central London. He said it began when
an embassy staff member pushed him,
then hit him with a metre-long plank
of wood while he was perched precar-
iously on the edge.
“We have two people being exe-
cuted in Bahrain and you will be the
third,” the man with the makeshift
weapon said, according to Moham-
med. He said that his accomplice later
declared that nobody would help him
because he was on “Bahraini land”.
Speaking publicly for the first
time, the protest er said he believed
he could have become “a second Jamal
Khashoggi, in London,” comparing
himself to the Saudi dissident mur-
dered by the country’s agents in its
consulate in Istanbul.
“I believed at the time he was trying
to push me off the roof without anyone
seeing that he had done this, so that it
would look like I had fallen down by
accident, or I had jumped off the roof,”
Mohammed said, referring to the man
he says had the weapon.
The incident is said to have taken
place after Mohammed climbed to the
T-shirt in a second phase of the strug-
gle. “I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I was
being suff ocated and I was going to
die, ” he said.
The protester said he managed to
wriggle free, and the two embassy staff
are then alleged to have tried to tie his
hands with a cable. One of the men,
Mohammed said, then threatened to
“tie him and throw him like a sheep
down the stairs”.
Footage fi lmed by activists shows
Mohammed clearly limping as he
leaves the embassy escorted by police,
and there were bruise marks on his
forearms and left leg, documented in
a medical examination made at a Lon-
don clinic two days later.Mohammed, a longstanding cam-
paigner for human rights in Bahrain,
left the country and obtained asylum
in the UK in 2006 after he had been
repeatedly detained and harassed by
the authorities in the authoritarian
country.
The activist had decided to make
the late-evening climb in the aftermath
of an earlier, peaceful street-level pro-
test, and had brought up a handwritten
banner saying, “I am risking my life to
save 2 men about to be executed in the
next few hours”. He shouted: “ Down,
down with Hamad”, referring to the
country’s king.
Shortly after he climbed on to the
embassy roof, staff arrived and the
violent incident began, he said. When
activists subsequently examined some
of the mobile phone footage taken
from the ground frame by frame, they
appear to show a white object striking
Mohammed. None of this, however,
was spotted at the time.
Mohammed was released on police
bail shortly after the incident. With the
help of fellow activists and the law fi rm
Bindmans, he is preparing to make an
offi cial complaint to the police and ask
them to investigate an alleged assault
by embassy staff.
Despite the protests, Bahrain went
ahead with the executions.
Mohammed also called on Dominic
Raab, the foreign secretary, “to expel
the Bahrain ambassador; it is irrele-
vant whether this happened under
his direction or this happened under
his leadership. Otherwise Britain will
be like a jungle, that people could do
whatever they want.”End of the line
for European
InterRailers as
UK train fi rms
cut their ties
Rupert NeateThe UK’s train operators are to pull
out of the Inter Rail scheme, which has
allowed unlimited train travel across
Europe for a fi xed price since 1972.
The Rail Delivery Group (RDG),
which represents the UK rail industry,
said it would withdraw on 1 January- It will also pull out of the paral-
lel Eurail scheme for non-EU visitors.
The change will have little eff ect
on UK travellers to Europe, who will
still be able to travel across EU coun-
tries, but they will no longer have the
option of starting their trip from their
home station. Instead they will have
to begin their journey on the Eurostar
from London St Pancras.
European travellers will not, how-
ever, be able to visit the UK as part of
their Inter Rail adventures. Instead
they will have the option of buying
BritRail passes offering unlimited
train travel across England, Scotland
and Wales , but for roughly the same
price as the current InterRail passes
that cover the whole continent, includ-
ing the UK.
A one-month BritRail pass costs
€605 (£557) for adults and €363 for
those 25 and under. A one-month
Inter Rail pass costs €603, or €464 for
those aged 12-.
Lord Adonis, who was transport
secretary in 2009-2010, described the
UK train operators’ decision to pull out
of the InterRail scheme as “shocking”.
Luisa Porritt, deputy leader of Lib-
eral Democrat MEPs, said: “This is a
desperately sad decision, which in
particular could lead to fewer young
Europeans enjoying Britain and more
barriers to Brits enjoying the rest of
Europe.
“Travel across Europe is already set
to become more diffi cult, cumbersome
and expensive as a result of this Gov-
ernment’s disastrous Brexit policy.”
Robert Nisbet, director of nations
and regions at the RDG, said operators
had decided to pull out of the Inter Rail
schemes because off ering them along-
side BritRail was “confusing”.
“The rail industry boosts Brit-
ish tourism and, working together,
rail companies are off ering the best
option for tourists with BritRail, which
is recommended by Visit Britain, off ers
two-for-one deals on 200 attractions
across the country and includes the
convenience of mobile tickets,” Nisbet
said. “Although the Eurail Group has
ended our decades-long membership
of Inter Rail since we stopped trialling
Eurail passes, British people will feel
no diff erence – they can still buy an
Inter Rail pass, get the Eurostar and
travel by train across Europe.”
The Inter Rail scheme was launched
in 1972, off ering people aged up to 21
travel to 21 countries for £27.50.
Inter Rail sales have tripled from
100,000 passes in 2005 to more than
300,000 last year.
top of the fi ve-storey embassy building
at 10.30pm on 26 July via scaff olding
in an attempt to get more coverage for
a protest against the planned execu-
tions, which have been condemned
by Amnesty International and other
human rights groups.
It ended when British police and
the fire brigade took the unusual
step of forcing entry to the embassy.
Mobile phone footage fi lmed by fellow
Bahraini activists shows that police
became concerned when they saw
Mohammed sitting on the edge of the
roof with another person nearby.
Offi cers can be clearly heard at
street level threatening to “break
down the door” if the embassy staff
visible from the rooftop did not return
to their building. Once the police offi c-
ers entered the building the incident
ended and the human rights protest er
was arrested for aggravated trespass.
The embassy praised its staff
yesterday for responding with “pro-
fessionalism and courage” and said an
“objective view of this incident would
determine that peaceful and lawful
protest does not take place on the roof
of a diplomatic premises at 10.30pm”.
The statement added that the alle-
gation that “embassy staff were trying
to kill Mr Mohammed is completely
unfounded and ridiculous” and
accused him of “unlawfully trespass-
ing” – and seeking to repeat a previous
protest in 2012 when he climbed to the
rooftop with a friend to protest against
the jailing of a dissident in Bahrain.
Mohammed, however, said that
two embassy staff held him down
and tried to suff ocate him with a wet▲ The protester showing marks on
his arm after leaving the embassy
▲ Mohammed’s injuries were
documented at a London clinic
▲ Moosa Mohammed making his protest on the roof of the fi ve-storey Bahraini embassy in Belgravia last month
after climbing up scaff olding. He was released on police bail shortly after the incident.‘I believed he was
trying to push me
off the roof, so that
it would look like
I had fallen’Moosa Mohammed
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