Zechariah Dhahiri
Zechariah (Yaḥya) al-Ḍāhirī (, , b. "circa" 1531 – d. 1608), often spelled Zechariah al-Dhahiri () (16th century Yemen), was the son of Saʻīd (Saʻadia) al-Ḍāhirī, from Kawkaban, in the District of al-Mahwit, Yemen, a place north-west of Sana’a. He is recognized as one of the most gifted Yemenite Jewish poets and rabbinic scholars who left Yemen in search of a better livelihood, travelling to Calicut and Cochin in India, Hormuz in Persia, Basra and Irbīl in Babylonia, Bursa and Istanbul in Anatolia, Rome in Italy, Aleppo and Damascus in Syria, Safed and Tiberias, as well as Jerusalem and Hebron in the Land of Israel (then part of Ottoman Syria), Sidon in Ottoman Lebanon and Egypt, and finally unto Abyssinia where he returned to Yemen by crossing the Erythraean Sea and alighting at a port city near Mocha, Yemen. He wrote extensively about his travels and experiences in these places, which he penned in a Hebrew rhymed prose narrative, and eventually publishing them in a book which he called Sefer Ha-Mūsar ("The Book of Moral Instruction"), in circa 1580.
Torture during the Bahraini uprising (2011–present)
Zakariya Al Asheri was a forty-year-old Bahraini blogger and journalist who worked as an editor and writer for a local blog news website in Al Dair. He died on 9 April 2011, officially as a result of massive heart failure and cardiac arrest following complications of sickle-cell disease while in Ministry of the Interior custody. His family reported that he had never previously experienced harmful effects of sickle-cell disease despite being a carrier. Although the Ministry of Interior informed the family that he had died from sickle-cell disease while asleep, a blindfolded cellmate described hearing prison guards enter their cell and beat Zakariya to death when he refused to be quiet. The commission attributed his death to torture.