Nov 24, 2013
Washington: Oct. 9 2013– (BNA) A delegation from the Ombudsman's Office, led by Mr. Nawaf Mohammed Al Ma'awda, recently made a working trip to Washington in coordination with the U.S. Embassy in Manama as part of plans and programmes for communicating with international institutions concerned with police-related complaints and prisons' monitoring in order to benefit from expertise and work mechanisms followed in these institutions.
Ombudsman said that this visit comes as part of a series of working trips and visits aimed to benefit from international expertise and experiences in the work of Ombudsmen. Members of the Bahraini Ombudsman delegation carried out many similar visits abroad which provided them the great opportunity to learn from diverse relevant experiences of the countries they visited.
The delegation visited Washington where they met Mr Philipp Ory the Executive Director of Police Complaints Office, Baltimore where they met officials in the city's Prison for Women and Los Angeles where they met Mr. Alexander Pumstani the Inspector-General of Police in L.A. City.
The delegation also met Mr. Le Roy Baker the Los Angeles Sheriff and Chief of Police. Los Angeles is one of the most populated cities in the United States of America with an estimated 10 million inhabitants. The meeting was also attended from the U.S. side by members from the Country Office.
According, to the chief of the Ombudsman's Office, the visit to the United States of America gave the delegation a great opportunity to have a direct experience of applicable work mechanisms. The visit comes after the launching of the Ombudsman's Office in the Kingdom of Bahrain last July and also after publishing the first report on the standards of visiting prisons and detention centres and also after publishing the first report on a visit to Jow Prison.
The Ombudsman delegation's visit to the United States adds to professional and theoretic expertise and boosts work mechanisms aimed to ensure humane treatment and consolidate values of human rights. The delegation comprised the chief Ombudsman Mr. Nawaf Mohammed Al-Ma'awda, Mr. Abdulrahman Ali Faris, the Director of Ombudsman's affairs, Ms. Ghada Hameed Habeeb, the Directress of the Directorate of International Cooperation and Development and Miss Rehma Isa Showaiter, a specialist in international cooperation. (IY)
