Arrest of Ali Hasan

Ali Hasan Alqudaihi (Arabic: علي حسن القديحي ‎‎) is an 11-year-old Bahraini boy who was arrested for allegedly participating in an "illegal" protest during his country's national uprising. Alqudaishi was arrested on 14 May 2012 and released without bail during a trial about one month later. On 5 July the court handed verdict allowing him to stay home while a social worker monitored him for a year. However, charges were not dropped.

Alqudaishi is one of the youngest detainees in Bahrain since the uprising began in February 2011.

Ali Hasan is a student in the sixth grade. He has three sisters and a brother. While his family, lawyers, news agencies, the BBC and Al Jazeera, newspapers, The Independent and The Daily Telegraph, rights groups Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR) and Amnesty International gave his age as eleven; however, a government statement said he was twelve.

Beginning in February 2011, Bahrain saw sustained pro-democracy protests, centered at Pearl Roundabout in the capital of Manama, as part of the wider Arab Spring. Authorities responded with a night raid on 17 February (later referred to by protesters as Bloody Thursday), which left four protesters dead and more than 300 injured. Protests continued for a month reaching over 100,000 participants in a nation of about 500,000 citizens, until more than a thousand troops and police from the Gulf Cooperation Council arrived at the request of government and a three-month state of emergency was declared. Authorities then launched a "brutal" crackdown on protesters, including doctors and bloggers. They carried out midnight house raids in Shia neighbourhoods, beatings at checkpoints, and denial of medical care in a "campaign of intimidation". However, smaller-scale protests and clashes have continued to occur almost daily, mostly in areas outside Manama's business districts, with some rare marches in the center of the capital city. More than 80 people had died since the start of the uprising.

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