Skip to Main Content
Printer Friendly Home > Press > Press Releases

For Immediate Release

PHR Calls Imprisonment of Medical Professionals “a Black Day for Bahrain”

Media Contact

Stephen Greene

Senior Communications Advisor
Tel: 917-679-0110

Cambridge, Mass. - 10/02/2012

PHR emphatically deplores the imprisonment today of six Bahraini medical professionals convicted as a result of caring for injured protesters last year.

“It’s a black day for Bahrain when it imprisons physicians and other medical professionals whose only ‘crime’ was to carry out their ethical duty to care for sick and wounded people,” said Richard Sollom, PHR’s deputy director. “Sadly, these medics have now joined the ranks of other prisoners of conscience unjustly locked up in Bahrain and elsewhere around the world.”

The six—Dr. Ali Al Ekri, Dr. Ghassan Dhaif, Dr. Mahmood Asghar, Dr. Saeed Al Samahiji, Dheya Ibrahim, and Ibrahim Al Demistani—were arrested early today and transported to prison to serve terms ranging from two months to five years.

The six were among 20 doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals arrested in April 2011 after treating protesters injured in the Arab Spring protest against the Bahraini regime. All had witnessed firsthand the injuries caused by the security forces’ excessive use of force. The Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, established by Bahrain’s king to investigate charges of human rights abuses, acknowledged allegations that the medics had been tortured before confessing to fabricated crimes and being convicted in a military court. But after their cases were transferred to a civilian court, nine were sentenced to prison terms of between one month and five years.

Yesterday, the country’s highest appeals court upheld the convictions of nine medical professionals, and the six with time still left to serve on their sentences have now been sent to prison, as they have exhausted all legal appeals.

US law prohibits the government from providing military assistance to countries implicated in human rights violations. Although a $53 million arms deal with Bahrain is now on hold, the Obama administration has continued to offer smaller arms sales as well as other forms of military assistance, notwithstanding the Bahraini government’s lack of progress toward improving the country’s human rights situation.

PHR now calls on the administration and members of Congress to condemn in the strongest possible terms the imprisonment of the medical professionals, to support their immediate release from prison, and to take steps to ensure that military assistance to Bahrain is suspended until that country can show that it is taking seriously its repeated commitments to conform to international human rights standards.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is an independent organization that uses medicine and science to stop mass atrocities and severe human rights violations against individuals. We are supported by the expertise and passion of health professionals and concerned citizens alike.

Since 1986, PHR has conducted investigations in more than 40 countries around the world, including Afghanistan, Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, the United States, the former Yugoslavia, and Zimbabwe.

  • 1988 — First to document Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against Kurds
  • 1996 — Exhumed mass graves in the Balkans
  • 1996 — Produced critical forensic evidence of genocide in Rwanda
  • 1997 — Shared the Nobel Peace Prize for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines
  • 2003 — Warned of health and human rights catastrophe prior to the invasion of Iraq
  • 2004 — Documented and analyzed the genocide in Darfur
  • 2005 — Detailed the story of tortured detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay
  • 2010 — Investigated the epidemic of violence spread by Burma’s military junta
  • 2011 — Championed the principle of noninterference with medical services
                  in times of armed conflict and civil unrest during the Arab Spring
  • 2012 — Trained doctors, lawyers, police, and judges in the Democratic Republic of
                  the Congo, Kenya, and Syria on the proper collection of evidence in
                  sexual violence cases
  • 2013 — Won first prize in the Tech Challenge for Atrocity Prevention with MediCapt,
                  our mobile app that documents evidence of torture and sexual violence

PHR News

Take Action