The former assistant commissioner resigned in July over accusations surrounding his handling of the phone hacking affair and his ties with Neil Wallis, the former senior executive at the News of the World who later worked for the police force.
Bahrain announced this week that Mr Timoney would lead a team of American and British advisers training the Gulf kingdom’s forces after criticism of the violent crackdown against pro-reform protesters.
Since mid-February, thousands of protesters have been staging regular demonstrations, calling for the Al Khalifa royal family to relinquish power.
On March 14, troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates invaded the country to assist the Bahraini government in its crackdown on the peaceful protesters.
According to the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, at least 40 people have been killed and hundreds arrested in the crackdown.
On November 23, the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry said the regime had used “excessive force” to crush pro-democracy protests.
The commission urged the Bahraini government to revise verdicts handed down to protesters in military courts, and to set up a compensation fund for victims of the crackdown.
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Bahrain hires British ex-top cop for reforms-report
03 Dec 2011 12:36
LONDON, Dec 3 (Reuters) - Bahrain has hired John Yates, who resigned from his senior post at London's Metropolitan Police Service earlier this year over a newspaper phone hacking scandal, to oversee reform of the Gulf Arab state's police force, the Daily Telegraph reported on Saturday.
Bahrain appointed the former Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, the force's top counter-terrorism officer, after an independent inquiry found evidence of systematic rights abuses during a crackdown on pro-democracy protests earlier this year.
"Bahrain's police have some big challenges ahead, not dissimilar to those the UK itself faced only a couple of decades ago," Yates was quoted by the paper as saying.
Members of the kingdom's Shi'ite Muslim majority have staged numerous demonstrations against alleged discrimination by their Sunni rulers.
The tiny island state was the target of international criticism for imposing martial law during a violent crackdown on protests.
The Bahraini government said earlier this week it planned to hire John Timoney, a former police chief in the U.S. state of Florida, as part of a reform drive it says is aimed at protecting rights and freedoms while enforcing order.
Bahrain has said it will comply with the findings of the inquiry and plans to develop a code of conduct for police. It is under pressure from its ally the United States to improve its rights record in order to secure an arms sale.
Rights activists have said senior figures should be sacked over the abuses listed in the inquiry's report, which appeared to be more hard-hitting than some in government had expected.
It said torture was used to extract confessions that were used to convict hundreds of people in military courts, mainly Shi'ites. It described the abuse as "systematic", and said some 3,000 people were detained and 2,000 sacked from state jobs.
Yates resigned in July over his role in a police investigation into the alleged illegal accessing of voicemails by journalists at the now defunct News of the World newspaper.
He had in 2009 decided not to re-open investigations into the practice, but a new probe launched in January found police had 11,000 pages of evidence which had not been thoroughly examined by detectives. (Reporting by Mohammed Abbas; Editing by David Cowell)
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Bahrain: Blast on parked bus near British Embassy
MANAMA, Bahrain – Bahrain's interior ministry says a blast occurred inside a minibus parked near the British Embassy, but there were no immediate reports of serious damage or injuries.
A brief statement posted by the ministry says the explosion occurred in a public parking area near the British diplomatic compound in the capital Manama. Investigators sealed off the area.
Security has been boosted sharply across Bahrain during annual Shiite religious ceremonies. Bahrain's majority Shiites began an uprising in February seeking greater rights from the Gulf kingdom's Sunni rulers.
An independent commission investigating Bahrain's unrest issued a report last month accusing security forces of abuses such as torture against suspected protesters.
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