Ghazi Farhan

By N.P. | MANAMA

On April 12th, plain-clothes police blindfolded him in his office car park, and took him for interrogation. This, he told his wife, was punctuated by whippings with a damp hose. Two days later, he was locked in "Dry Dock" jail with hundreds of other suspected demonstrators and given sun-tan lotion and told to rest in the sun to heal the scars. He seemed confident he would be out within 60 days—the period the state is allowed to hold suspects without charge. His wife said she did not want to hire a lawyer, for fear that might provoke the authorities. The announcement of the lifting of the State of National Safety, official-speak for emergency law, on June 1st gave all hope of a mass release.

But on May 31st, after 48 days inside and the day before the lifting of martial law, Mr Farhan was accused of "participating in an illegal gathering of more than five persons", a charge carrying a three-year prison term. Like tens of thousands of others in this small archipelago of 600,000 nationals, he had occasionally stopped by Pearl Roundabout to observe the largest protest in Bahrain's history. Driven by the blustery winds blowing from North Africa, opposition demands had escalated. Alongside calls for an elected government to replace the current one, largely filled with the ruling family's princes, were growing cries for the downfall of the Sunni monarchy.

Mr Farhan was not among those protesting. The closest he came to activism, says a foreign observer, was organising charity galas at the Rotary Club. A month before his arrest, he had opened his latest café, Speed, on the racetrack that the crown prince had built for Formula One racing. But in the crackdown that followed, he came under pressure to sell his shares. On Twitter, a self-professed anonymous policeman sent a series of messages with the hashtag Haraqhum ("burn them") calling for a boycott of another of his cafés where Bahrain's streetwise go to smoke shishas.

His wife, Ala'a Shehabi, an economics lecturer with ties to the opposition, fears she is to blame. She is a British national with a nine-month-old child, and rather than arrest her, they picked on her husband. "Seeing Ghazi being shackled and punished on my behalf is worse than being punished yourself," she says.

After meeting Barack Obama in Washington on June 8th, Bahrain's crown prince, Salman al-Khalifa, said he would initiate a dialogue next month in an attempt to heal the rift with the opposition. But on the ground some Bahrainis say he and his father, the king, are no longer taking day-to-day decisions. With Saudi backing, the world's longest-serving prime minister, the king's uncle, Khalifa al-Khalifa, remains firmly in charge.

Despite the lifting of the emergency law, checkpoints have reportedly proliferated around the marginalised Shia villages on the west of the island. The security forces fire tear-gas at small protests and Shia religious processions alike. On Thursday they arrested a blogger. Hundreds, some bearing the scars of torture, have been tried in the military court next to the prime minister's palace and sentenced after hearings sometimes lasting only a matter of minutes.

Regime loyalists, for the most part Sunnis, fear the court has been too lenient with subversives set on ousting the monarchy, imposing only two instances of capital punishment. But on Twitter they express their delight that the measures taken by the authorities have largely succeeded in limiting the "chaos" that has wracked much of the rest of the Middle East.

Opposition groups, who are largely Shia, note that many, including 50 doctors and Mr Farhan, are being charged with illegal assembly and spreading false information. In his meeting with Prince Salman it was these rights—of free speech and peaceful assembly—that Mr Obama stressed were essential to protect for there to be any kind of reconciliation in Bahrain. For now, that still looks some way off.