‘The Butcher of Bahrain’: Government refuses to release files on British military officer who ran Gulf state’s police

‘The Government is refusing to release 38-year-old papers shedding light on Britain’s relationship with the authoritarian regime in Bahrain, amid suggestions that it is protecting a deal on a new Royal Navy base in the Gulf country.

Campaigners asked the Information Rights Tribunal to intervene and force the Foreign Office (FCO) to release the full text of a 1977 document detailing the conversation between British officials and Ian Henderson, a British military officer who ran the police force in the Sunni-ruled state for 30 years.

Henderson, who died two years ago, was dubbed the “Butcher of Bahrain” after allegations that he was complicit in the ransacking of villages, the sadistic sexual abuse of Shia prisoners and the use of power drills to maim them.’

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