MANAMA, Aug 7: A Bahraini rights group said on Saturday it had received reports a member of the country's royal family had been tortured at Guantanamo Bay.

It is the second report of abuse of a Bahraini national at the US naval base in Cuba where hundreds of people seized during the invasion of Afghanistan are held.

The Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR) said an Arab recently freed from the base had said Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al Khalifa, a distant relative of Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa, had been tortured but did not elaborate.

The charge comes a day after Bahrain said it would ask the United States to investigate allegations US troops in Guantanamo tortured another Bahraini detainee, Juma al Dossary.

A report by BCHR quotes three Britons freed from the base as saying Al Dossary was repeatedly beaten by US soldiers.

"One of the Arabs who was recently freed from Guantanamo told our centre that Sheikh Salman was also tortured," BCHR's president, Nabeel Rajab, said.

"He said Sheikh Salman was mistreated because he was not cooperative ...," Mr Rajab said, declining to give the name or nationality of his source.

Bahraini foreign ministry official Youssef Mahmoud said the Gulf state's query to Washington would also include Sheikh Salman and four more Bahrainis who have been held at Guantanamo for more than two years.

"The query includes everybody. Depending on the report we have directed our embassy in Washington to discuss the information with the US secretary of state. What applies to one of the prisoners should cover all six," Mr Mahmoud said.

Sheikh Salman's family said he was arrested in Pakistan after he had gone there to do relief work. Bahrain's royal family has several thousand members.

A group of international lawyers visited Bahrain, the headquarters for the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, last month during a trip to other Arab countries to prepare a lawsuit on behalf of the Guantanamo prisoners.-Reuters