Ali Issa Saqer, 31, died at the hands of prison security guards after "causing chaos in detention," police said in a statement posted on the Interior Ministry's Twitter page. "Security men had to intervene to restore security... but he resisted, forcing them to engage him, which resulting in him receiving several wounds," it said.

He died in hospital, police said, without specifying whether he was shot and fatally wounded or had suffered other injuries.

Police said Saqer was arrested on suspicion of having killed policemen by running them over with a car.

The ministry said another detainee, Zakaraya Rashed Hassan, 40, who was arrested on April 2 for "inciting hatred against the regime and spreading fabricated news," had been "found dead" in his prison cell.

A postmortem examination showed sickle cell disease was the cause of death.

Meanwhile, Mansoor Al-Jamri, the sacked chief editor of the main opposition Al-Wasat newspaper, said he has been summoned by a prosecutor investigating the paper's allegedly unethical coverage of the uprising against the country's rulers.