Majeed Marhoon

Who was Majeed Marhoon?

Majeed Marhoon was a Bahrani saxophonist, and a former Leftist political activist with the National Liberation Front of Bahrain. He spent 22 years in prison in Bahrain between 1968 and 1990, accused of planting a bomb in the car of a British intelligence officer of 21 March 1966. Seventeen of his years in captivity were spent at the Jidda Island prison, four of those years in solitary confinement.

He claims to have been tortured in prison under the orders of British officer Ian Henderson.

At the Addaama neighborhood in Hoora – Bahrain, the neighborhood of the simple and the deprived, Majeed Marhoon was born on the hot afternoon of 17 August 1945.

Majeed says that his birth was one week after the second bombing of Japan by the American forces and the heat that day was extreme due to the spreading of atomic dust in the ozone layer.

Majeed faced the bitterness of life and poverty by excelling in school," I was one of the best students in the school despite the hardships of living, at times we used to go to bed with empty stomachs. In 1953, I was transferred to Gudaibiya elementary school before it was fully constructed.