DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: Bahrain’s leading human rights activist will be questioned by a military prosecutor, according to the Gulf country’s Interior Ministry, which has been leading the crackdown on Shiite protests against Sunni rulers.

The Interior Ministry accused Nabeel Rajab, head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, of tampering with photos of a man who died in custody last week.
A statement posted on the ministry’s official website late Sunday said Rajab posted on Twitter a “fabricated image” of a detainee, Ali Isa Saqer.
Rajab claims Saqer was fatally beaten in custody.

He told the Associated Press that the photo he had posted on his Twitter account was genuine, showing Saqer’s body covered with bruises and gashes.
Rajab said the campaign against him is aimed at preventing him documenting human rights abuses in Bahrain.
Rajab said he has not been contacted by the Interior Ministry and only learned of the planned questioning from the ministry’s website.

“They want to do their crimes in secret,” Rajab said of Bahrain’s government. “I am one of the few human rights activists who has not yet been arrested and the government wants to silence me and prevent me from doing my work.”
Authorities claim that Saqer died Saturday after struggling with guards. A government photo shows few signs of injuries.

Bahrain sharply tightened Internet and media controls under the military rule imposed last month to quell protests by Shiite majority against the Sunni monarchy that has ruled Bahrain for more than 200 years.

Bahrain’s public prosecutor began Monday questioning three senior journalists sacked from the Gulf kingdom’s only opposition newspaper over accusations of falsifying news about the government’s crackdown on protesters.
Al-Wasat was suspended on April 2 over charges that it had falsified news, but resumed publishing the next day after its editor-in-chief Mansoor al-Jamri, its British managing editor Walid Noueihed and head of local news Aqeel Mirza agreed to resign.

On April 4, two Iraqi journalists working for Al-Wasat, Raheem al-Kaabi and Ali al-Sherify, were deported without trial.
Jamri, Noueihed and Mirza said they received a fax Thursday from the government’s media arm, the Information Affairs Authority, notifying them that they would be questioned by the public prosecutor over the alleged fabrication of news.

Bahrain’s media law prohibits the imprisonment of journalists but allows for fines. However, it was not clear what sentence might be imposed under martial law.
The defendants said they had been allowed access to their lawyers.

Jamri, who was questioned first, said he admitted to publishing six incorrect articles as accused.
However, he argued that the false news was emailed to Al-Wasat from the same IP address as part of an apparent campaign to plant disinformation.
He said this news slipped through the editing net as Al-Wasat, whose printing press was attacked by thugs on March 14 and whose offices were inside the curfew zone imposed the same week, was operating on a skeleton staff.

“They were asking how we did our work and who was responsible but I said I was, because we had reduced our staff. We were working under exceptional circumstances,” Jamri told Reuters after his hearing, which lasted more than two hours.
“They asked why we processed these six news articles. I said they were written in a deceiving way, they arrived at night and they came from the same IP address which we discovered after Bahrain TV’s program,” he said by telephone.

He was referring to a program in which state television first aired the accusations against the newspaper.
“The mistake was not done on purpose. Someone trapped us,” he added.
A British-educated engineer, Jamri was one of the leading moderate voices in Bahrain during weeks of protests.
Al-Wasat did not back calls by hard-liners for the overthrow of the royal family, calling instead for political reforms.