Oh dear. What happened to John Yates? How did a suave, sophisticated, liberal British policeman, once tipped for the top job in the Metropolitan Police, end up shilling for a vicious Middle East dictator who shoots, teargasses and tortures unarmed protesters?
“Yates of the Yard”, as he became known during his pursuit of Tony Blair over the cash-for-peerages scandal, was appointed by the king of Bahrain to oversee reform of the country’s security forces late last year.
This was the very same King of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, who had turned those security forces on his own people when the Arab Spring reached the country’s capital on 14 February, 2011. Protesters had arrived in Manama’s Pearl Square to demand greater political freedom and greater equality for the Shia majority. More than 30 people were killed in the crackdown that followed.
Opposition groups say that Yates, who quit the Met over the phone-hacking scandal, was hired to give the ruling al-Khalifa family a veneer of respectability – and he does seem to have taken to his new role with relish. In February, Yates told the Telegraph that the turmoil in Bahrain wasn’t the result of “organised protests” but “vandalism, rioting on the streets”.
Earlier this month, with human-rights groups calling for the forthcoming Bahrain grand prix to be cancelled, Yates intervened to urge teams to travel to the Gulf kingdom, suggesting that he and his family felt safer in Manama than in London. In a leaked letter, dated 11 April, Yates admitted that there were “nightly skirmishes” but claimed that these were “overplayed” by social media sites sympathetic to the opposition. “I feel completely safe,” he wrote. “Indeed, safer than I have often felt in London.”
Of course, if you’re in charge of security and policing for a brutal, unelected dictator, you do tend to feel quite safe.
Until, that is, the inevitable revolution comes. Then they’re often strung up from the nearest lamppost. If, and let’s cross our fingers here, Bahrain’s al-Khalifah ends up going the way of Tunisia’s Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Yates might well find himself desperately trying to book a seat on the first flight out of Manama.
The former Met commander is a disgrace. To cosy up to News International is one thing; to defend and dissemble on behalf of a blood-stained Middle East tyranny quite another. If Yates really believes Bahrain is “safe” and that the protesters are “vandals”, then perhaps he should venture out of his plush, air-conditioned office inside of the interior ministry in Manama and go and speak with the family of 22-year-old Ahmed Ismail, who bled to death last month after being shot by government loyalists at a rally. Or with the parents of 15-year-old Sayed Hashim, who bled to death on New Year’s Eve after being hit in the neck by a tear gas canister.
Yates was appointed to his post in December 2011; according to a recent report by the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, there have been at least 30 documented cases between November 2011 and March 2012 where Bahrainis have died after confrontations with police or security forces. So much for his “reforms”. Yates of theYard has failed. Again.
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