(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - An investigation has found evidence that Bahrain’s security forces are torturing medical workers to force criminal confessions.
Since pro-democracy protests erupted in the Persian Gulf kingdom in February, doctors and nurses have been targeted, with hundreds facing arrest, Al-Jazeera reported.
The government of Bahrain deployed security forces onto the streets on March 14 in an attempt to quell more than four weeks of protests.
Medics working to save the lives of hundreds of wounded demonstrators were among those threatened and arrested.
“Obviously we remain very concerned about all these reports of human rights abuses there,” Mark Toner, the US state department spokesman, said.
“We’ve been quite clear in our message that there is no security solution to what’s going on in Bahrain and we encourage dialogue and we also ask that the Bahraini government, in any actions it takes against individuals, that it be done in a transparent manner in accordance with international human rights obligations.”
Forty-seven health workers, 24 doctors and 23 nurses have been charged since the protests began, while 150 more are reportedly under investigation by the government.
Some medics reported being taken from their homes by armed masked men.
“We were blindfolded for about 10 hours. Only at the time when [we] were videotaped did they take the blindfolds off,” one medic said.
“When we started to talk, if they didn’t like the things that we were saying they stopped us and told us again that we should say this this and this.
“Those people who interfered with the accessibility of the hospital to the population of Bahrain are the guys who are responsible for a criminal act and disobedience of the civil service rules of the government of Bahrain,” Mohamed Amin Alawadi, the chief of medical staff at Salmaniya medical complex, told Al-Jazeera in response to claims the medical staff were targeted because they treated Shiite protesters.
Earlier, Bahraini officials denied an Al-Jazeera report that police had carried out raids on girls’ schools, detaining them and beating them, during its crackdown against pro-democracy protesters.
No Confessions Bahraini opposition leaders pleaded not guilty in court on Thursday to charges of belonging to a terrorist group and attempting to overthrow the monarchy, state news agency BNA reported.
Fourteen out of a group of 21 defendants appeared before a special court set up in the wake of a mid-March crackdown on Shiite-led protests.
The other defendants who are abroad are being tried in absentia.
“They all answered not guilty” to all charges, except for Abduljalil Al-Muqdad, who ‘admitted taking part in unauthorized demonstrations’, BNA reported.
Amnesty International said the opposition figures faced an ‘unfair trial’ and demanded that international observers be allowed at the next hearing on Monday.
Bahrain should release the defendants ‘immediately and unconditionally if they are held solely because of the criticism of the authorities’, the London-based rights group said in a statement. Amnesty also demanded an independent investigation into alleged torture or other ill-treatment. Among those on trial is also Ibrahim Sharif, the Sunni leader of the secular group Waed, who played a prominent role in the month-long protests.
Foreign Troops Will Stay Saudi-led forces sent to Bahrain to help crush anti-government protests will remain even after emergency rule is lifted next month, the head of the kingdom’s military said.
The Bahrain military commander, Sheik Khalifa bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa, also threatened even harsher crackdowns if demonstrators return to the streets in the strategic US ally, which is home to the Navy’s 5th Fleet.
“I say to those who did not get the message, `If you return, we will come back, stronger this time,” Sheik Ahmed was quoted as saying late Wednesday by the official Bahrain News Agency. He further claimed that protesters were ‘given pills which affected their minds and made them do unusual things’--a new allegation that echoed assertions by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi that his opponents included young people on hallucinogenic pills placed ‘in their coffee with milk, like Nescafé’.
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