Bahraini King blames Syria, Iran for unrest

King Hamad of Bahrain defended his record in handling anti-government protests, insisting it was not government policy "to go and kill people on the roads" and that the Bahraini security forces did not indulge in "ethnic cleansing or genocide". "Syria is training opposition figures in Bahrain," the Gulf island state's king said in an interview published on Tuesday, in which he also denied systematic rights abuses during state crackdowns on pro-democracy protests earlier this year.  The Sandhurst-educated ruler blamed Syria and Iran for "stirring up our people" and claimed the regime had evidence that Syria was training young Bahrainis to overthrow the ruling family. King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa's interview with Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper comes a day after he met British Prime Minister David Cameron, who urged the king to press ahead with national reconciliation and to engage with Bahrain's opposition. "We have evidence that a number of Bahrainis who oppose our government are being trained in Syria .... I have seen the files and we have notified the Syrian authorities, but they deny any involvement," the king said, giving no further details. King Hamad visited London on Monday, weeks after an independent inquiry found evidence of systematic rights abuses and said Bahrain's Sunni Muslim rulers used excessive force to cow protesters and detainees.  Responding to the conclusions of an independent commission published last month, which found that the Bahraini police had used excessive force in suppressing anti-government protests, King Hamad vowed to implement wide-ranging reforms with the aim of establishing a "kingdom of tolerance" in the tiny Gulf state. "What happened was the result of individual acts, not government policy," he said. "It is not the policy of the Ministry of Interior to go and kill people on the roads. The policemen and soldiers involved in the killings did not take notice of the discipline side of matters. "If people have done something wrong then they should be held accountable. We have removed people from positions of authority so that this does not happen again." Twenty Bahraini police officers have been prosecuted, including those said to be responsible for the killings of five demonstrators who were tortured to death, while the head of the National Security Agency has been replaced. The group of medics who were jailed for participating in the protests have had their trials annulled and been released on bail, even though the commission found evidence that some of them had fabricated anti-Bahrain stories for the international media. King Hamad has also hired John Yates, the former Assistant Commissioner of the UK's Metropolitan Police, and the former police chief from Miami to oversee a radical overhaul of the country's security apparatus. "I care about Bahrain," he said. "Bahrain is very dear to me. I will not allow people to play around with our laws." King Hamad said he was prompted to establish the inquiry into the disturbances because of what he believed were misleading reports on the disturbances. "This was an attempt to move attention away from the problems in Syria and Iran and make people look instead at Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait." The King has already implemented a number wide ranging reforms following publication of last month's report by Professor Cherif Bassiouni, a former UN human rights lawyer, which concluded Bahrain's security forces had used "excessive force" against anti-government demonstrators, in which 35 people died and more than 1,600 were detained without charge. It found many detainees had been subjected to "physical and psychological torture". Syria is dominated by President Bashar Al-Assad's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and is allied with Shiite Iran, long blamed by Bahrain for stirring trouble among its majority Shi'ite population.  In addition Bahrain is constantly under attack from Iran's government-controlled media, which has accused the ruling family of persecuting the country's Shia Muslim population.  But King Hamad said the independent commission found no evidence that the government was pursuing such a policy. "There is no ethnic cleansing in Bahrain, no mass genocide, no policy of killing innocent people," he said.  Bahrain's Shiites hold frequent protests against what they see as state discrimination in jobs, services and political representation, charges the government denies. "It is not the policy of the Ministry of Interior to go and kill people on the roads. The policemen and soldiers involved in the killings did not take notice of the discipline side of matters," King Hamad said, adding that wrongdoers would be held accountable. Last month the king replaced the head of the state security apparatus as part of a shakeup after the findings of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, headed by international rights lawyers. Bahrain is a key Western ally in the region and home to the US Fifth Fleet.