In the name of God the most merciful and precious

THE BAHRAINI MEDICS “CONVICTED BY MILITARY COURT

ON 29 T H SEPTEMBER ‘2011” STATEMENT REGARDING THE

PUBLIC PROSECUTOR’S STATEMENT ON THE TRIAL OF

MEDICS IN CIVILIAN COURTS

BAHRAIN RETREATS FROM ABOLISHMENT OF MILITARY TRIALS OF

MEDICS

The Bahrain News Agency and local newspapers revealed a statement made by HE the Attorney-General, Dr. Ali Fadl Al-Boainain, in which he declared that the Bahraini authorities have taken a new decision to revert our trial, we the Medics, to the civil courts in a manner of appeal; thus, confirming the determination of the Bahraini authorities to deliberately hold us accountable and have us punished as a result of executing our duty, which is obligatory by our humanitarian imperatives, the values of the profession, and the medical and professional oaths that we have all taken. Moreover, it clearly indicates the declination of the authorities in Bahrain from withdrawing the unwarranted cruel martial sentences that were levied upon us, which are unjustified under any legal platform; accordingly, and in order to clarify the image that has become distorted and confusing to the citizens, residents and concerned local and international organizations, we are obligated to highlight the following  points:

1.   The Public Prosecutor has affirmed the re-trial of doctors and medical staff, which was welcomed by many international organizations, which were not convinced by the procedures or trials. Yet the decision to transfer our case to the Court of Appeals advocates the adoption of the validity of the procedures and provisions established against our rights in the military courts, and that our referral to the Court of Appeal comes as a phase complementary to those of military trials under the name of the National Safety Court, which in the sense are still valid, and will take the subsequent provisions built on the military trails’ sentences, which is not consistent with Prosecutor’s title statement made to the public, that suggests the harsh military provisions against Medics have become obsolete.

2. The lack of guarantees and the manifestations of a fair trial was not limited to the type of court or its jurisdiction in order to allow us to make an assumption that virtuous decisions will be achieved once we are transferred to the civil courts; what is required to be available to us as defendants, as is the view of the security services, opportunities to appropriately and fairly defend ourselves as stipulated in the international conventions of the Universal Declaration of Human rights in 1948, which are not consistent with what was practiced by the security forces to extract fake confessions from the Medics under the systems of threats and torture. The aforementioned invites us to demand for a complete and thorough re-investigation as a whole in the presence of lawyers and representatives from the United Nations and under the monitor of international human rights organizations, as the prosecution's main witness is an officer of the General Directorate of Investigation and Criminal Evidence. The officer, a Lieutenant-Colonel, was personally involved in torturing the Medics to extract false and mocked confessions, and always referring to so-called “secret sources” for assembling information against the medical staff.

3. We strongly believe that we have been thru a painful period in the history of the nation, and that the measures for our arrest, interrogation and imprisonment have seriously and significantly violated different customs, international values, and the Constitution of the Kingdom of Bahrain. Our confessions were fabricated and assembled on unacceptable and inappropriate procedures, since the confessions had been extracted under torture and coercion that were spitefully used to fabricated and fictitiously develop mass media materials, which leads us to demand that all charges be dropped and nullified based on the rule (what is built on falsehood is false).

4. We appeal to the United Nations represented by H.E. the Secretary- General Mr. Ban Ki-moon to urge the Bahraini authorities to deal with our case in a humane and just manner; to deal with us as Medics that have practiced their professional and humanitarian duty, as stipulated by the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian laws. Furthermore, we call upon the United Nations to direct the Chairman of the Fact-Finding Commission, Professor Mahmoud Bassiouni and the President of the neutral doctors of the United Nations to testify about the legality, appropriateness, and fairness of the investigation and prosecution; and to testify as well on the Forensic Doctors’ reports who had examined the injuries caused by torture.

We call upon all the dignitaries, personalities, humanitarian organizations and institutions, and non-governmental agencies to stand in solidarity with all the Medics in Bahrain, whether being prosecuted or not, who have had a major role in the treatment of the wounded, and have saved many lives during the late events in the Kingdom, which had a positive impact in reducing the number of casualties during the unrest period. The Medics are now professionally handcuffed with temporary cessation of work and the imposition of travel ban outside the borders of Bahrain, those unjust punishments do not only affect the Medics, but unfortunately distress lots of patients who are in need of them. We, the distressed Medics as a whole, support 67 of our children in total, as well as our anxious families, suffer both psychologically and financially from the ill-effect of this ongoing unpleasant hostile situation.

Members of the Medical Staff on trial