Doctors and nurses ‘tortured with wooden boards studded with nails’ in barbaric crackdown on protests in Bahrain

By Daily Mail Reporter
Updated: 11:45 EST, 8 June 2011

Doctors and nurses who are on trial before a military court were 'sleep deprived beaten with rubber hoses and wooden boards studded with nails' before being 'made to sign false confessions' Amnesty International has claimed.

Dozens of medical workers, who were arrested weeks ago, face a range of charges arising from their involvement in treating people injured when security forces violently crushed mass pro-reform protests in February and March.

They are accused of misusing their positions at Salmaniya hospital to make false allegations of security force violence, to have operated on some patients unnecessarily causing their deaths and to have denied medical treatment to others for sectarian reasons, as well as a string of related offences.

But the accuseds' relatives have told Amnesty that security officials at Bahrain’s Criminal Investigations Directorate tortured the detainees.

One of the charged, who was bailed last month, claimed he was slapped in the face while blindfolded, insulted and threatened with: 'if you don't confess I'll take you to someone who will make you confess'.

The same detainee says he was forced to remain standing for hours, denied sleep and placed in front of a cold air-conditioning unit all night and interrogated again the next morning while still blindfolded.

'I was so tired that I kept quiet and only answered yes or no,' he told Amnesty.

'After a while he gave me some papers and made me sign them while I was still blindfolded. I did not see what I signed, but I signed on eight or nine papers.'

The trial of the 48 medical staff, most of whom worked at the Salmaniya Medical Complex, opened at a military court in Manama on Monday but was adjourned until 13 June.

Some of the defendants have been released on bail but others remain in prison.

Before the trial opened, detainees’ were only able to communicate with their families by phone, Amnesty claims.

Their lawyers had not been permitted to see them and were not allowed to be present when they were interrogated.

The Bahraini authorities ignored their lawyers’ requests to see their clients.
A relative of one of the accused who attended the court yesterday told Amnesty that the prisoners’ heads had been shaved and most had lost a lot of weight since their arrest weeks ago.

The men among them were made to stand in the hot sun for around 30 minutes before the session began: “They were blindfolded and handcuffed, and these were only removed when the session began”, said the relative.

Amnesty International Middle East and North Africa Director Malcolm Smart said: 'The Bahraini authorities must immediately undertake an independent investigation into these new torture allegations and bring any officials responsible to justice.

'The court must also throw out any "confessions! that were obtained through torture or other duress as international law requires.

'All detainees must be granted prompt and regular access to lawyers of their own choosing, their relatives and any medical treatment that they may require.

'The authorities must also ensure that doctors, nurses, paramedics and other health and medical workers are able to carry out their work without discrimination, interference or fear of reprisal.'

The violent crushing of the pro-democracy protests in the tiny Gulf kingdom saw police fire tear gas and buckshot at campaigners in the capital Manama. Four were killed and hundreds injured.