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to travel to Bahrain before July. 662 This confirmed The Economist’s account that the

Egyptian legal expert was purposely not allowed out of Egypt since ‘apparently he

was not in the junta’s good books’. 663 The reason why he might not have been on

good terms with the regime was that he had stood for a return to a ‘constitutional

government in 1954’, thus opposing Nasser during the crisis that overtook Egypt in

1954. 664

During Al-Bakir’s stay in Egypt he also met with the General Secretary of the

Arab Lawyers Union headquartered in Cairo. The aim of the meeting was to

convince the General Secretary to raise the issue of Bahrain with the UN Human

Rights Committee. 665

By the month of May the Bahraini Health and Education Councils had started

to take shape. The Council elections that were due to be held in March were put off

until April. All six candidates who ran for the Health Council were selected as no

other candidates had been nominated. 666 Then followed the Administration’s

announcement on 19 May of its appointed members of the two councils. In the

Health Council the following were nominated: Ahmed Ali Kanoo, Rashid Abdul-

Rahman Al-Zayani, Abdul-Razeq Khunji, Mohammed Al-Mahroos, Hamad Mubarak

Al-Fadhel, and Abdul-Aziz Al-Janussani. For the Education Council: Abdul-Rahman

662 TNA, FO 1016/467, Chancery at British Embassy to Residency, 18 May 1956.
663 ‘“Faster, Faster…” in Bahrain’, The Economist, 14 July 1956, 141.
664 A. Goldschmidt Jr., ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-Sanhuri’, Biographical Dictionary of Modern Egypt (London:
2000), 180-81.
665 ‘Qathiyat Al-Bahrain Tuarath ala Lajnat Huquq Al-Insan fi Al-Umam Al-Mutahida’ [Bahrain’s Case is
Presented to the United Nation’s Human Rights Committee], Al-Watan, 15 June 1956, 1.
666 ‘Bernard Burrows, Residency’s Report for the Month of May 1956’, in Political Diaries of the
Persian Gulf, vol. 20 1955-1958, ed. R.L. Jarman (London: 1990), 1-8 (2).

© Hamad E. Abdulla 213