Manama incident

The Manama incident on August 26, 2010 involved the arrest in the Seef shopping mall in Manama, Bahrain, of Fakhria al-Singace, the sister of Dr Abdul Jalil Al-Singace, human-rights spokesperson for the Bahrain opposition Haq Movement. According to The New York Times, three women wearing the niqāb and abaya entered the mall and unfurled a banner reading, "It is forbidden to arbitrarily arrest and detain people". More than a dozen plainclothes and uniformed police officers surrounded them, and Fakhria al-Singace was handcuffed and arrested after being pinned spread-eagled to a cafe table. She was released the next day.

The women were protesting against the arrests of several human rights activists, including Abdul Jalil al-Singace, who was detained on August 13 at Bahrain International Airport after returning from a conference in London, where he had offered evidence about the human rights situation in Bahrain. The government has accused him of involvement in terrorism. The arrests are part of a crackdown on political opposition in Bahrain that saw 159 arrests in two weeks in August 2011, with many activists reportedly held without charge or access to lawyers or family members.

Amnesty International has asked the government to reveal the whereabouts of eight of the detainees, who include a number of Shia clerics. Local websites describing the situation have been blocked by the government.

The Sunni governing family is concerned about upcoming parliamentary elections on October 23 that could see it lose to the country's Shiite majority. Bahrain's close relationship with the United States — it hosts an American naval base — and its Shiite citizens' relationships with Iran, have added to the tension.