More than 100 medical workers have been targeted and detained by Bahrain’s government

May 18, 2011 at 3:00 PM EDT
Doctors Detained in Bahrain Face Accusations of Medical Abuses
By: Talea Miller

More than 100 medical workers have been targeted and detained by Bahrain’s government in recent months for their role in aiding protestors, say human rights groups, and many are still locked up facing military trials. But the government says some health workers engaged in gross medical abuses, including refusing care based on sect and exaggerating injuries to the media.

“If you are a health professional and wear a lab coat you are suspected of being subversive. You are interrogated, videotaped and compelled to offer false confessions of wrong doing,” said Richard Sollom, deputy director of Physicians for Human Rights, who was in Bahrain in April and authored an investigative report on the detention of medical workers.

“They are being abducted in the middle of the night sometimes from their homes in front of their children, blindfolded,” he said. Human Rights Watch has also received credible reports of torture and mistreatment from detainees who have been released. A doctor the NewsHour team spoke with in Bahrain — and agreed not to identify for safety reasons — said she treated protestors during her off hours and was detained for weeks as a result.

“During the interrogation, whenever I said something which they don’t like it, they will slap me again. And I was beaten also by a hose on my hands and my thighs,” she said. “In the dark…they gave me the paper of confession to sign it and thumb — thumbprint without knowing what is there in that paper.”

Bahrain’s Minister of Justice Sheikh Khalid bin Ali bin Abdulla al Khalifa denied any form of maltreatment for detainees in an interview with senior correspondent Margaret Warner. …more