Team back from Bahrain

Pictured was Prof Damian McCormack with Bahrain’s Health Minister Dr Fatima Al-Balooshi. Prof McCormack led an Irish delegation of doctors and politicians to Bahrain last week, where Minister Al-Balooshi pledged she would appeal to King Hamad to release on bail the 14 doctors who remain in prison following anti-government protests.

By Lloyd Mudiwa.

The head of an Irish delegation that travelled to Bahrain to highlight the plight of 14 detained doctors in the Kingdom has recounted their face-to-face meeting with that country’s acting Health Minister.

Orthopaedic surgeon Prof Damian McCormack, who had worked with two of the imprisoned medics when they trained at the Mater in Dublin, said the Irish team who met Dr Fatima bint Mohammad Al-Balooshi discussed the serious and credible allegations of torture by the Bahraini officials.

This was despite having their earlier requests for a meeting rebuffed pending completion of an inquiry by an independent commission established by the King of Bahrain, King Hamad.

Prof McCormack said the delegation politely listened to Dr Al-Balooshi’s version of events, in which she accused doctors of deliberately extending wounds and causing some of the deaths of activists in a bid to implicate the authorities. She stated that the Salmaniya Medical Clinic, in particular, had become a centre of political activity.

The Irish delegation — which also included former Minister for Foreign Affairs David Andrews, Marian Harkin MEP, Senator Averil Power and Prof Eoin O’Brien — rejected Dr Al-Balooshi’s account, citing credible evidence of alleged torture, including prolonged standing, whipping and sexual molestation. The Irish team were reportedly referred to as “terrorists” by the head of the Bahrain Medical Society during the visit.

“When I told the acting Minister, who is a doctor and also a Minister for Human Rights, that one of the detained doctors posed a suicide risk after enduring sustained torture, her face dropped a little and she said she would look into it,” Prof McCormack told IMT.

The Temple Street consultant said the Minister, who turned down their request to see the 14 doctors still in detention, undertook to raise with King Hamad the prospect that they might be released on bail. Three of the detained doctors, Ali Al Ekr, Basim Dhaif and Ghassan Dhaif, trained at the RCSI.

lloyd.mudiwa@imt.ie