Shortly after 6pm on Saturday, March 19, Dr Bhasim Dhaif’s evening prayers were interrupted by a loud bang. It was the sound of the front door of his home in Manama, Bahrain’s largest city, being broken down. Moments later masked men in civilian clothes rushed upstairs to the room where Dhaif and his four children — aged from nine to 18 — had been praying.
As the children were bundled out, the surgeon was handcuffed and the house searched. A safe was opened and documents, including the title deeds to his home, removed. Computers, phones and keys for the family’s two cars — one belonging to his wife, Maha, also a doctor — were seized.
Several days later Dhaif was allowed to call his family from prison. When his youngest child began crying, the doctor was told to make him stop or the call would end. On June 2, Dhaif’s wife, a health administrator overseeing four regional clinics, was suspended from her role.
Dhaif’s Kafkaesque nightmare, as relayed by his family, echoes the experiences described by the families of 46 other doctors arrested over the past three months. Most claim to have been dragged from their homes with no warning, tortured in custody, and placed on trial before a military court. Their only “crime”, they claim, was to treat protesters injured during pro-democracy demonstrations in Pearl Square. The doctors believe they have been targeted because they allowed international media to broadcast footage of the wounded at Salmaniya hospital, the capital’s largest medical facility.
At least four of the doctors are fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI). They trained in Ireland and one, Dr Ali al-Ekri, has an Irish-born child. Their cases are being highlighted by Front Line, a human-rights group, which took out a full-page advertisement in a national newspaper last week calling on Irish doctors to support their colleagues in Bahrain.
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The human-rights group has criticised the RCSI for not condemning the treatment of doctors in the kingdom. They argue that Ireland’s largest medical school has a conflict of interest, having invested €60m in a medical college in Bahrain in 2004. The RCSI’s Bahrain outpost now has 900 students and income grew by 40% in 2009, at a time when the organisation’s other investments were in decline.
Last weekend the RCSI, under pressure from the local and international medical community, finally broke its silence and announced it had met Bahraini government ministers on at least six occasions since February.
“The focus of these meetings was to express our deep concerns for the rights of the detained medical personnel,” Cathal Kelly, the organisation’s chief executive, said in a letter to The Irish Times. “Governments should not infringe upon the duties of medical professionals and should not target or punish those who seek to uphold these internationally recognised principles.”
The organisation declined to add to its statement last week, saying it had no further comment. While supporters of the RCSI say it has now “un-equivocally” upheld the principle that governments should not impede the work of medics in conflict zones, critics note it failed to issue an outright condemnation of the regime’s behaviour.
Dr Mustafa Alawi, one of the signatories of the Front Line letter, is a Bahraini national based in Ireland. He knows many of those imprisoned. He wants the RCSI to use its influence in Bahrain to lobby for their release. “If the international medical community does not keep pressure on the Bahrain government, these doctors have no chance,” he said. Alawi said the regime in Bahrain was sensitive about the way it was viewed in the West. It wants to attract foreign businesses to the Gulf and to host the Fifa World Cup in 2030. “Organisations like the RCSI have real influence,” he said.
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Professor Eoin O’Brien, a former president of the Irish Heart Foundation and another signatory of the Front Line petition, said any organisation that failed to condemn the imprisonment and torture of its own members was “complicit”.
So is the RCSI putting “commerce before ethics”, as its critics claim? Or is it right to remain “apolitical”?
THOSE who say the RCSI should be more forceful with the Bahraini regime point to developments last week. On Wednesday, the king ordered the disbandment of military courts, so the doctors’ trials will continue in civil courts. The abandonment of these so-called show trials has been greeted by human-rights groups as evidence that Bahrain can be persuaded to improve its behaviour.
This weekend Front Line praised the “apparently positive development” of the appointment of a royal independent investigation committee to review the events of February and March, including the military’s handling of protests. The king says he wants to begin a “national dialogue” with opposition groups. The Front Line organisation, though, remains concerned.
“Doctors and nurses, including the four who studied in Ireland, are still facing prosecution for providing medical treatment to injured demonstrators,” said Mary Lawlor, the organisation’s director, who wants the “immediate and unconditional release of all those still in detention” and the dropping of all charges against the others.
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A Front Line worker, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, has already been sentenced to 15 years in prison, and more than 30 people have died in protests. Front Line says it has been told by contacts on the ground that the situation remains volatile.
On Thursday, a day after the king’s calls for peace talks, thousands of supporters gathered near Pearl Square but were disbanded by riot police firing tear gas and stun grenades. One protester reportedly died from his injuries.
The Bahrain embassy to London, which offers diplomatic services to Bahrainis in Ireland, declined to comment last week on these developments. The regime has characterised the trials as an internal matter, of no relevance to the international community.
Alawi bats away any suggestion western countries should not be drawn into internal Bahraini politics. He also rejects attempts by the Sunni regime to characterise demonstrations by the majority Shia population as “sectarian”. “They are trying to say the accused would not treat Sunnis, but this is ridiculous,” he said. “These differences are not as pronounced as they make out. My cousin and uncle married Sunni women.”
Alawi said that the Bahrain protests, brutally suppressed by the military, were in favour of increased democracy, were inspired by the so-called Arab Spring, and had little to do with religion. The doctors’ only “crime”, he suggests, was treating wounded demonstrators. Alawi also believes the doctors’ treatment is an issue for Irish doctors and the Irish public. “It’s an international humanitarian issue,” he said.
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O’Brien, who plans to visit Bahrain with Front Line later this month, said the RCSI were making a mistake by not joining public calls for the doctors’ release. “You can repair financial bankruptcy, but not moral bankruptcy,” he said.
Despite the criticism, internal documents released under the Freedom of Information act suggest the RCSI is satisfied its standing has been “enhanced” in Bahrain because of its commitment to the country during the conflict. Emails from Kelly to staff show his primary concern is for the college to remain “apolitical” and “non-sectarian”, going as far as stopping Bahraini students from using their college emails to discuss politics and telling them not be seen with RCSI logos at protests.
Dr Fareeda al-Dallal, the wife of al-Ekri, one of the imprisoned doctors, said she was not surprised by the RCSI’s position because of its “huge investment” in Bahrain. So do the organisation’s close links with the Bahraini regime mean it is less impartial than it claims?
A GRADUATION ceremony for RCSI students in Bahrain earlier this month was attended by the country’s education minister, while pro-government news agencies regularly show pictures of RCSI officials, including Kelly and president Eilis McGovern, posing with senior members of the regime, including military commanders. Last week McGovern visited the King Hamad University Hospital in Muharraq, where she was welcomed by commander brigadier-general Dr Shaikh Salman bin Ateyatala Al Khalifa.
Critics have posted comments on RCSI Bahrain’s Facebook “wall” accusing the organisation of hypocrisy, but the comments are usually removed quickly. Human-rights groups and opposition politicians ask why the RCSI continues to engage with the Bahraini regime but has yet to contact the families of imprisoned fellows of the college.
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Fifteen years ago Bhasim Dhaif was treating fractures and carrying out hip replacements at the Cappagh, the Mater and the Temple Street hospitals in Dublin. Ghassan, his brother, worked in St James’s several years later.
During Dhaif’s imprisonment, it is alleged he was tortured in front of his brother in the hope that Ghassan would sign a confession. Zahra al-Sammak, Ghassan’s wife, an anaesthetist who worked at St James’s and St Vincent’s while in Ireland, has also been arrested and faces similar charges to the men.
She claims to have been tortured during a 25-day spell in prison. Front Line says al-Sammak was forced to stand for two days, blindfolded, while guards called her a “whore” and humiliated her at regular intervals until she eventually signed a “confession”, admitting she had taken part in protests and had exaggerated the injuries of the wounded.
Dr al-Ekri, an orthopaedic surgeon, was arrested while performing a surgical procedure in Salmaniya Hospital on March 17. His wife, Dr al-Dalal, was beaten with a thick hose while in custody. The couple’s third child was born in the Rotunda hospital while they were working in Ireland between 1999 and 2002. They lived in an apartment in Beaumont, beside the hospital.
Al-Ekri is accused of plotting to overthrow the monarchy, transferring knives and weapons to protesters by ambulance, and exaggerating injuries of the wounded, including splashing blood on some before they appeared on television.
His wife claims the charges are absurd. “He was dedicated by the king for his work in Gaza in 2009 during a humanitarian mission,” she said. “For showing the same dedication in Bahrain, he was seized. It doesn’t make sense.”
None of the families has received any support from the RCSI. The organisation claims to be using top-level diplomacy to help the imprisoned medics, but surely an organisation with such a strong local presence should have at least made contact with the families of its own members?
O’Brien said the RCSI’s policy of quiet diplomacy was inappropriate. “When people are being tortured, you don’t use diplomacy,” he said. “You say as loud as you can that it’s utterly unacceptable.”