- Pro-democracy activist Zainab Alkhawaja is arrested in Bahrain, her sister says
- She is accused of assaulting a female officer and inciting hatred, she adds
- Bahraini officials say Alkhawaja resisted arrest
- Video shows her being subjected to tear gas, then being dragged across grass
(CNN) -- Bahraini pro-democracy activist Zainab Alkhawaja has been arrested, her sister told CNN.
Maryam Alkhawaja said from London early Friday that her sister is at the public prosecutor's office and expects to be interrogated. Her sister's lawyer said she's been charged with having an illegal gathering, assaulting a female officer and inciting hatred against Bahrain's leaders.
Bahraini officials confirmed her arrest in a written statement, saying Alkhawaja was part of a large group of women gathering on a roundabout outside the capital Thursday. When police dispersed the demonstration, all the women except Alkhawaja left the scene, authorities said. Police say she resisted arrest and had to be removed from the site.
In a similar incident in Abu Saiba, in northern Bahrain, police said they arrested a second woman. She was not identified.
The Bahrain Center for Human Rights issued a statement Thursday claiming Bahraini security forces "used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse hundreds of opposition supporters attempting to protest alongside a highway leading" to Manama.
Alkhawaja, 27, was staging a sit-in in the roundabout with several other women when police fired tear gas at them, the group said. She still would not move, and then a tear gas canister was fired directly at her, according to the center.
Video posted on YouTube shows a woman who appears to be Alkhawaja sitting by herself, being handcuffed and then dragged by a pair of female security officers over the grass. She then appears to be put in a police vehicle.
The rights center identifies Alkhawaja as the mother of a 1-year-old child, and says her husband and uncle are all also in jail. So, too, is her father, Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, the former president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and a former protection coordinator with Front Line, an Irish-based human rights organization.
