CAIRO — Bahrain’s security forces torture detainees using electric shocks, beatings and sexual abuse, despite a public pledge by the king of Bahrain four years ago to end such practices, according to a report released on Monday by the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

The group interviewed 10 detainees, including political dissidents accused of attending protests. One of them, Hussain Jawad, a human rights advocate who was arrested in February, said officers had squeezed his genitals, beaten him in a hallway and “threatened to rape his wife.” Other detainees described similar practices.

Bahrain’s ruler, King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, earned international praise four years ago for commissioning an independent committee to investigate weeks of unrest in his country, including a crackdown on protesters by the security forces. The resulting, nearly 500-page, report was a rare public accounting of one of the 2011 revolts that swept the Middle East, as well as the state-led violence used to suppress it.

The Obama administration, a major ally of Bahrain, praised the report, and King Hamad vowed to heed its findings, including the “systematic” abuse of detainees. “We do not tolerate the mistreatment of detainees and prisoners,” King Hamad said at a news conference on Nov. 23, 2011.