Turk activist reveals ugly truth in Bahrain

Turk activist reveals ugly truth in Bahrain
Hürriyet Daily News – İpek Yezdani – 14 December, 2012

A Turkish forensics expert sneaked into Bahrain as a tourist and conducted a secret autopsy to prove that government forces had tortured a 23-year-old Bahraini man, Yousef Mowali, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Dr. Şebnem Korur Fincancı, who has devoted her life to fighting torture and human rights violations around the world, proved with her autopsy that the victim was electrically tortured to the point that his life was at risk.

Mowali had left his home near the international airport to go for a walk on Jan. 11 and never returned. Police said they found Mowali’s body floating in the sea on Jan. 13 in the Amwaj region not far from his family’s home in Muharraq. A state doctor reported the cause of death as drowning and ruled out signs of violence.

However Mowali, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia a few years earlier, was taken into custody by the police during his walk.

His family, who were only able to receive his body after eight days, wanted a second autopsy report done by an independent forensic pathologist in order to prove that torture was used.

Following the family’s request, human rights activists in Bahrain contacted the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT) for help.

“The lawyers in the IRCT sent an email to our group and asked for a forensic expert who could take the risk to go to Bahrain and examine the body of a torture victim. I was the most suitable among all of us because I did not need a visa to go inside Bahrain and did not look European at all, so I would not attract any attention,” Fincancı said.

Fincancı went to Bahrain Jan. 20 and stayed at the home of an activist to make it easier to collect what she needed for the forensic examination.

“I bought the surgical equipment in Bahrain, and we also found the necessary chemical solutions to put tissue samples in. I wore a long dress and hijab in order to look like a relative of the family who was visiting to express condolences. There were several police outside the place of the funeral but they were not suspicious of me because they were probably expecting a man and a European,” Fincancı said.

Fincancı made the two-hour-long forensic examination secretly inside the place where the funeral was being held. …more