Recently Bahrain’s attorney general has ordered the civilian court retrial for 20 medical practitioners who were punished to long prison terms as supposed patrons of anti-government demonstrations. Bahrain’s government issued a statement by Wednesday that put prior judgments to an end which demonstrated the doctors as picketers. According to the prior judgment, medical personnel were ordered to get penitentiaries for years ranging from 5 to 15 depending on each doctor’s liability.

[pullquote_right]Bahraini doctors tortured: agony beatings, sleep dispossession, solitary detention, sexual harassment and many others[/pullquote_right]

Lawyers from Bahraini medics declared earlier that the trial was done wrongly. According to them, “the most essential elements for a fair trial were not available at all”. They also stated that medical doctors were undertaken in the military courts even though they were civilians.

After the end of emergency state, doctors were tried in military courts: that was an action against their constitutional rights. Furthermore, lawyers complained that doctors during the military charge were not allowed to meet with their legal representatives and attending their interrogations. What’s worse, the doctors were treated badly and tortured by a number of ways. These torments include agony beatings, sleep dispossession, solitary detention, sexual harassment and many others.

That wasn’t the end of it. Lawyers were also prevented from meeting their clients to ask about how they were being treated. The court refused to investigate the claims that the doctors were tortured.

Politics & Doctors

Attorney general Ali Alboainain declared in his statement that the case will be conducted before the chief civil court of Bahrain. Bahrain’s state news agency reported that the Department of Public Prosecutions is in search for truth and trying to enforce the actual law. It is further acting to protect the rights of charged doctors, the news agency said.

Attorney general added that no doctor or medical practitioner would be castigated due to his opinions regarding political circumstances and for carrying out his specialized chores.

Nevertheless, Matar Matar, the opposition MP in Bahrain said that even if a retrial is made, it wouldn’t be a completely fresh retrial but will appear more likely as an appeal.

A researcher in Bahrain, Boumedouha said that Bahraini king had issued a royal declaration in August. The declaration states that every case that is tried in the National Safety Court i.e. the military court may also be appealed in the civil court again.

On 23rd of October, the doctors’ torture case will be heard.

 

A Sadistic Crackdown 

Many human rights agencies and groups proposed a crackdown against all brutal activities carried out with doctors. They further approximated the casualties above 30 where a number of people were wounded while security forces cleared the sites from protesters.
To dispose of the current awful political circumstances, many human rights groups is hoping for United States to halt a probable $53 million arms sale to Bahrain, home of the U.S. Fifth Fleet.

Dr Nabeel Hameed

From AlJazeera, it says,

[box_dark]On February 18, Abdulredha Buhamaid was filmed walking towards the Pearl roundabout and chanting the slogan “peacefully” alongside dozens of protesters when all of a sudden shots rang out from the army tanks up ahead and the person filming fell to the ground. When the camera went back to Buhamaid, he was lying in a pool of blood on the ground. The video was widely circulated and seen as representative of the treatment of the unarmed protest movement by a violently repressive state.

Dr Nabeel Hameed, one of Salmaniyah hospital’s three neurosurgeons, was called to the emergency room to treat Buhamaid.

“His skull bones were completely shattered into pieces. His brain was mashed and he was bleeding from a major blood vessel going to the brain, the bullet [shattered] that. His condition was severe and [prospects for] survival was were bleak.”

Dr Hameed performed a CT scan, and saw fragments of metal from what he could only assume was a live round throughout the left side of Buhamid’s brain. Unsure if the patient was brain dead or not, Dr Hameed decided to go forward with surgery, even though he wasn’t optimistic that Buhamaid could be saved.

After surgery, Buhamaid was transferred to the ICU where he suffered brain death the following day.

On April 11, Dr Hameed was called to the administration office. Before he went he finished his rounds. “People were disappearing,” Dr Hameed said. “I knew I would too.”

Sure enough, there were five or six plainclothes police officers waiting for him, Dr Hameed said. They took him away along with other doctors.

Dr Hameed was accused of killing Buhamaid. Because video of his death had gone had gone viral online, they wanted to shift the blame away from themselves, Dr Hameed said.

They tried to pressure Buhamaid’s family to come out against him. However, Dr Hameed said the family stood by him, and the father of Buhamaid said, “[they] want me to complain against the doctor who tried to save him and leave the person who shot him free.”

“They don’t interrogate you as much as they [bully] you into saying what they want.” What they wanted, Dr Hameed said, was for him to admit to killing the protester.

To his surprise the charges disappeared in June and he was released after almost three months in detention. However, Dr Hameed, still faces misdemeanor charges and is due back in court later this month.[/box_dark]

 

We pray that Allah rewards all the doctors & medics who have helped the Bahraini people, those who were detained, tortured or killed while doing their duty to humanity, and to all who are suffering or have lost their lives during the revolution. May He grant them the company of prophets, martyrs, the righteous and Prophet Muhammad SAW himself.

 

 

Nida Zaheer Sh
Nida has done BS in Computer Science with specialization in Software Engineering. She likes to employ her engineering and expert writing skills to work on exceptional ideas and concerns that are meaningful for others as well.