Hundreds of men and women chanted “Hamad must fall” during the demonstrations.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Security forces in Bahrain used excessive force, including torture and the extraction of forced confessions, against detainees who were arrested in a sweeping crackdown early this year during protests that deeply polarized the country, according to a report by an independent commission that investigated the uprising and its aftermath.


The report, released on Wednesday, presented a devastating portrait of what it called disproportionate and indiscriminate force often used by the security forces to repress protests in February and March that were organized primarily by the Shiite Muslim majority in Bahrain, a tiny Persian Gulf state that is a prominent American ally.

“A number of detainees were tortured,” M. Cherif Bassiouni, an international law expert who led the inquiry, said at a news conference in Manama, the capital, as King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa listened. Mr. Bassiouni added that the dimensions of the torture “proved there was a deliberate practice by some.”

The report by the panel, known as the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, also said there was no clear evidence that Iran had incited the unrest, as senior Bahraini officials have contended.

In Washington, the Obama administration welcomed the report, but said the onus was now on Bahrain’s government to hold accountable those responsible for abuses and to undertake reforms to make sure they do not occur again.

The commission found that Bahrain’s security services and Interior Ministry “followed a systematic practice of physical and psychological mistreatment, which amounted in many cases to torture, with respect to a large number of detainees.”

In the report, the panel called the government’s use of force and firearms excessive and, “on many occasions, unnecessary, disproportionate and indiscriminate.” It cited instances in which masked men broke into the homes of dissidents between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m., “terrorizing” inhabitants.

The inquiry determined that 35 people died during the protests, including five security personnel. Five detainees were tortured to death while in custody, the panel concluded, and other detainees endured electric shocks and were beaten with rubber hoses and wires. Hundreds of people were also injured.

A total of 2,929 people were arrested during the protests, the report said, and at least 700 remain in prison. The commission urged a review of the sentences handed down to protesters.

The commission concluded that Iran did not play a role in the uprising.

“The report did not say the truth,” said Ali al-Aswad, a member of the Al-Wefaq party, the biggest legal opposition group, and a former lawmaker. “It did not say who was responsible for killing protesters and firing people from their jobs and universities and causing people to lose their homes. It failed to point the finger at senior officials.”

The opposition has insisted that the repression was in fact systematic, part of what it calls institutional discrimination against the Shiite majority. Although the report stopped short of naming names — as the opposition had demanded — it did say that the abuse of detainees originated at the highest levels of Bahrain’s security institutions.

“The very fact that a systematic pattern of behavior existed indicates that this is how these security forces were trained and how they were expected to act,” the report said. “This could not have happened without the knowledge of higher echelons of the command structure” of the Interior Ministry and National Security Agency.

In a grim reminder of the divisions that still beset Bahrain, the police clashed with protesters on Wednesday in at least two Shiite villages hours before the report was released. Activists said at least two people were killed in the violence. Residents and activists also said the security forces used rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the protesters.

Hundreds of men and women chanted “Hamad must fall” during the demonstrations, the residents and activists said.