Will F1 Drivers who protested against event last year get medical treatment if injured?

Bahrain’s ‘underground medics’ secretly treat injured protesters
By Bill Law – BBC News – 24 February 2012

Fearful of arrest when seeking treatment in Bahrain’s hospitals, injured protesters are turning for help to medics who have been forced underground, a Bahraini doctor has told the BBC.

Sixteen-year-old Mohammed al-Jaziri was seriously injured when he was struck in the face with a tear gas canister on February 18, in the Bahraini village of Sitra.

He was with a band of young Shia confronting riot police in a community that has been a hotspot of protest since an uprising against Bahrain’s Sunni Muslim rulers began a year ago.

In a video seen by the BBC, Mohammed is shown, together with other youths, hurling stones toward a line of police.

At a distance of less than 50m, one of the officers appears to aim and fire a tear gas launcher towards Mohammed who collapses clutching his head. Police then run forward and drag him off.

John Timoney, Miami’s ex-police chief, was hired by the Bahraini government to improve policing methods. When asked about the rules of engagement for tear gas, he told the BBC that police in America are trained not to fire head high and to either arc the canister into the air or roll it on the ground.

He said that the purpose for using tear gas in Bahrain is to keep the protesters at a distance and added “the police do not purposefully hit people with it”.

Mr Timoney said that a tear gas canister could be a lethal weapon but it was not intended to be used that way.
Hospital interrogation

But what is said to have happened next to Mohammed illustrates why so many Bahraini Shia protesters are afraid to seek help in the country’s hospitals.
John Yates (left) and John Timoney John Yates (left) and John Timoney are overseeing reforms to the Bahraini police

His elder brother Hussein says Mohammed was taken to a local clinic by police. From there an ambulance took him to the Salmaniya Medical Complex, the main hospital in the capital Manama.

Hussein says that within ten minutes of arriving police attempted to interrogate his brother who had been hit in the eye and was bleeding heavily.

Throughout that night, Hussein says, the police repeatedly attempted to interrogate Mohammed, even though he was only semi-conscious.

“I told them: ‘Please just leave us alone. Can’t you see he is in no condition to answer your questions?'”

The next day, Hussein alleges, his brother was subjected to a three hour interrogation by a public prosecutor who refused to give the family his name.

“We need to get him out of Salmaniya. He urgently needs an operation on his eye but we don’t trust them,” Hussein said.

Bill Law reports for Newsnight on fresh clashes between police and protesters

Hussein is hoping his brother can get treatment in a private hospital but believes Mohammed will lose the sight in one eye.

John Yates, the former assistant commissioner of Scotland Yard in the UK, was also brought in by the government. When told of the alleged incident at Salmaniya, he said that in the UK interrogation of suspects in hospital was highly unlikely to happen. “The health (of the suspect) comes first.” …more