Or so Telegraph Sport understands: just after 4pm local time police
also detained this newspaper’s correspondent, along with a Dutch colleague
and our translator and driver. We had been driving through the Shia
neighbourhood of Sanabis and were told we were suspected of attending an
“illegal demonstration”.
Protestations that Sanabis had in fact been quiet as we drove through fell on
deaf ears. We were taken to a police station while our press credentials
were checked.
For our translator, local activist Mohammed Hassan Sudaif, it was no doubt a
rather more anxious affair. He had just been released from custody that
morning, having been arrested and beaten up while accompanying journalists
to a demonstration on Friday. Three hours later we were all released, with
no further explanation.