Bahraini doctors speak out against torture

Doctors have been tortured and given long prison sentences for giving medical care to anti-government protesters.

Reporter in Bahrain
Al-Jazeera

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"Far away from the crowded village streets covered in debris from the protests and clashes with police still happening on an almost nightly basis, are the streets lined with the Bentleys, Mercedes, Range Rovers, and Lexuses that belong to many of the Bahraini doctors who are soon going to prison.

The two areas couldn't be more different from each other, yet in both are signs that Bahrain's uprising, which began on February 14 of this year, is far from over.

Before their sentencing on Thursday, the doctors had agreed to remain mostly silent and not speak out with the hope that the case would be swept under the rug and their charges dropped.

No one could believe it when, on September 29, 13 of the medics received 15-year sentences, two 10-year sentences, and five received five years. Their charges ranged from possessing weapons, to occupying a hospital, to inciting hatred of the regime. All had already been imprisoned from a few weeks to five months, when they claimed they were tortured and forced to confess to crimes they say they didn't commit. Doctors have said they were only doing their job and treating people in need of medical care.

This is the first time that a group of doctors have been put on trial and punished for being on the frontline during any of the Arab uprisings to sweep North Africa and the Middle East.

Dr Nada Dhaif, an oral surgeon sentenced to 15 years, said that this amount of doctors being jailed is a truly "unique case" in the "history of any revolution or unrest, and in the history of medicine."

When the sentences were announced, the doctors' silence ended. Global media immediately picked up their case, and international human rights groups condemned the charges as "ludicrous"...."