Bahrain’s prison system deliberately denying medical care to detainees: Amnesty

AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): Amnesty International has called on Bahraini prison authorities to abide by international human rights law in their treatment of detainees.

The rights group also wants to see mechanisms implemented that will ensure medical care for prisoners.

The call is part of Amnesty’s latest report, which blasts the kingdom’s prison system for failing to provide adequate health care to detainees suffering from “grave chronic illnesses”.

The report focuses on 11 prisoners, including high-profile activists, whose treatment behind bars paints “a picture of frequent, ongoing, and in some cases willful medical negligence”.

According to Amnesty’s findings, Manama possesses all the resources required to provide adequate health care to all prisoners. However, in multiple cases “it has failed to do so not for lack of capacity but as a matter of deliberate denial of treatment.”

Among those named in the report is 27-year-old Elyas Faisal al-Mulla, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2015.

“For a period of roughly two months after he was hospitalized due to bloody vomiting on 1 August 2015, the prison administration refused to authorize release of al-Mulla’s medical reports to his family,” the report reads.

“When his family was finally given a medical report, over eight weeks after he was initially hospitalized, it disclosed that al-Mulla had stage-three colon cancer,” it added. “Despite the fact that he was obviously very ill, he was transferred back to Jaw the same August, within less than a week of undergoing a colon biopsy.”

Amnesty also throws the spotlight on the plight of three female detainees, Hajer Mansoor Hassan, Fawzeya Mashaalla Haji and Medina Ali, who have not been properly diagnosed or received follow-up treatment.

Earlier this month, the three were “physically assaulted” by guards at the Isa Town Women’s Prison.

Other forms of harassment in Bahraini detention centers include sectarian discrimination against Shiite detainees who are frequently targeted for observing religious occasions.


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