Bahrain Frees Doctors Imprisoned for Treating Protesters

UPDATE: It looks like Bahrain's war on doctors is subsiding.

The doctors and medical staff imprisoned for treating protesters in Bahrain during the Arab Spring uprisings have been released and granted new trials, the country's state-owned news agency reported Wednesday.

The country's Department of Public Prosecutions ordered them freed after studying the verdict of the special security tribunal that had convicted them of trumped-up-sounding charges such as "attempting to topple the regime." According to the news agency, Bahrain's attorney general stressed that "no doctors or other medical personnel may be punished by reason of the fulfillment of their humanitarian duties or their political views."

With their harsh sentences of up to 15 years in prison overturned, the medical workers will face a new trial in Bahrain's ordinary court system. "By virtue of the retrials, the accused will have the benefit of full reevaluation of evidence and full opportunity to present their defence," the attorney general said. The New York Times pointed out that the statement "seemed a tacit acknowledgment that the special court had denied the defendants their rights."

Human rights groups cautiously welcomed the news, the Times reported:

(They) noted that the announcement came as Congress began to evaluate the planned American sale of $53 million worth of weapons to Bahrain, including bunker-busting missiles, night-vision technology and dozens of Humvees. Human rights groups have written to Congress urging that the deal be blocked because of rights abuses in Bahrain.

Rights groups estimate that since the unrest began, at least 34 people have been killed, more than 1,400 have been arrested and as many as 3,600 have been dismissed from their jobs.

POST on Sept. 29: First it raided Doctors Without Borders, forcing the international relief group out of the country. Now the Kingdom of Bahrain, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East, is throwing medics in prison.

A security court on Thursday sentenced more than a dozen doctors to 15 years in prison for treating the wounds of anti-government protesters during the unrest earlier this year. Other medical staff got five to 10 years.

Most worked at the country’s largest public hospital, which was stormed by pro-government forces this spring in what critics saw as a bid to deny medical treatment to the opposition. The tribunal this week convicted the doctors of charges such as attempting to topple the regime, possessing unlicensed light weapons, and "spreading fabrications and lies," a defense attorney told the Associated Press.

More from the AP:

Human rights groups blasted the ruling against the medics and said legal proceedings against Bahrain's doctors and nurses were a "travesty of justice."

"These are simply ludicrous charges against civilian professionals who were working to save lives," said Philip Luther of Amnesty International.

Hundreds of activists have been imprisoned since March, when Bahrain's rulers imposed martial law to deal with protests by the country's Shiite majority demanding greater rights and freedoms. More than 30 people were killed in the course of the unrest, which shook up a country of about half a million that has been ruled for over 200 years by a Sunni Muslim monarchy.

Though small, Bahrain is a crucial strategic ally for the United States. Its ports host the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, responsible for much of the Middle East and East Africa. Critics say the U.S. has tolerated human rights violations there because of its military presence.

Al Jazeera English has more on the regime’s justification for the arrests. A top official told the news agency the doctors were not "practicing their profession in the manner that all doctors and nurses should have been abiding to.”

British journalist Robert Fisk, who was in Bahrain at the time of the uprising, disagreed, telling Al Jazeera the doctors weren’t focused on aiding the rebellion. "It was a professional sense of, 'How do we treat so many people who have been shot and wounded in a short period of time?'"