Blindfolded, beaten and tortured: grim new testimony reveals fate of Bahrain’s persecuted doctors

Blindfolded, beaten and tortured: grim new testimony reveals fate of Bahrain’s persecuted doctors
Horrifying evidence sheds light on brutality of state crackdown on medical staff. Jeremy Laurance reports
Tuesday, 10 May 2011

Harrowing testimony of torture, intimidation and humiliation from a doctor arrested in the crackdown on medical staff in Bahrain has revealed the lengths to which the regime’s security forces are prepared to go to quash pro-democracy protests. Interviews obtained by The Independent from inside Bahrain tell of ransacked hospitals and of terrified medical staff beaten, interrogated and forced into signing false confessions. Many have been detained, their fate unknown.

Inspired by the pro-democracy protests which swept Tunisia and Egypt earlier this year, Bahrainis took to the streets in their thousands in February, demanding greater political rights and more equality for the Shia Muslim majority, ruled over for decades by a Sunni monarchy.

The state launched a fierce counter-offensive in mid-March, swiftly and brutally crushing the uprising with the backing of Saudi security forces.

The campaign of intimidation against the doctors and nurses who bore witness to the bloody crackdown began two months ago at Salmaniya Medical Complex, the main hospital in the capital Manama. It has since been extended to at least nine health centres which have been systematically attacked by the security forces over the past month, an activist cataloguing the abuses says.

Each incident follows the same pattern: police jeeps surround the centre, before armed men and women in masks close the gates and line all those caught inside up against the wall.

Police dogs are also used to spread fear among the staff. Though it is impossible to corroborate the accounts, they correspond with others emerging from Bahrain and from reports by international monitoring groups.

The latest crackdown followed protests by doctors at the refusal by the regime to allow ambulances from Salmaniya Hospital to attend to those injured in the protests.

Details of the assaults, collected by the families of those detained and passed to The Independent, show that at least 40 medical staff were arrested in nine health centres between 10 April and 27 April. Dr Ahmed Jamal, president of the Bahrain Medical Society, was arrested at his clinic on 2 May. …more