The daughter of a prominent Bahraini activist has said she is beginning a hunger strike in protest over the arrest of her father, husband, brother-in-law and uncle.
Zainab Al-Khawaja said on Monday that she would refuse food until her father Abdulhadi, who she says was beaten unconscious before being taken away, and other relatives are released.
Three of the men were detained following a police sweep on Zainab's house over the weekend, while her uncle was arrested three weeks ago.
She announced her hunger strike in a letter addressed to Barack Obama, the US president, posted on her blog Angry Arabiya.
"I chose to write to you and not to my own government because the al-Khalifa regime has proven that they do not care about our rights or our lives," she wrote.
"I demand the immediate release of my family members. My father: Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja. My husband: Wafi Almajed. My brother-in-law: Hussein Ahmed. My uncle: Salah Al-Khawaja."
It appeared to be the first time an activist has gone on hunger strike since the Bahraini government began its crackdown on protesters last month.
Martial law
Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, the former president of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, was arrested amid a continued crackdown on pro-democracy activists in the tiny Gulf nation.
Zainab said her father had been calling for democracy and had been saying that the country's rulers were guilty of killing, torturing and detaining people, and should be put on trial.
On Monday Bahrain said it had released 86 people held under martial law while "legal measures" were being taken against other detainees.
More than 400 people have been arrested and dozens have gone missing since the crackdown began on March 16, the leading Shia opposition group Wefaq has said.
Bahrain's Sunni Muslim rulers quelled weeks of protests led by mostly Shia demonstrators by spreading security forces throughout the capital and calling in troops from neighbouring Sunni-led Gulf Arab states, including oil giant Saudi Arabia.
Separately, Bahrain has put two Iranians and a Bahraini on trial on charges of spying for Iran's revolutionary guards.
"They are accused of contacts with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to give them military and economic information from 2002 to April 2010 ... with the intention of damaging the national interest," the Bahrain News Agency said.
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