Sir, – A number of statements in the article “Irish-trained surgeon given five-year sentence in Bahrain” (Rowan Gallagher, Home News, June 15th) merit closer scrutiny.
The first and most relevant aspect of the sentences is that they have been passed by a dysfunctional and corrupt legal system on doctors who are innocent of what they stand accused. The King of Bahrain appointed an independent commission of inquiry to ascertain what went wrong in his country when the Arab Spring swept through the island in March 2011.
Quite apart from finding that the public security forces violated human rights by subjecting detainees to torture and intimidation to obtain confessions in flagrant disregard both of Bahrain and international human rights law, the commission indicted the Bahrain judicial system for its “lack of accountability” and found the calibre of the judicial and prosecutorial personnel in the courts to be “a subject of great concern”, especially for accepting evidence based on forced confessions.
Such were the deficiencies of the legal system that the commissioners recommended that sentences should be dropped, that victims of human rights abuse should be compensated, and that dismissed employees should be reinstated and compensated. And yet discredited judicial officers in dysfunctional courts continue to sentence innocent doctors and others to protracted periods in primitive jails.
It is surely time for the legal profession in Ireland (and elsewhere) to highlight the fact that Bahraini citizens are being sentenced in contravention of international legal conventions to which the Bahrain government is a signatory.
Sadly the medical profession in Ireland has, with a few exceptions, effectively acquiesced through silence and prevarication with the Bahrain government.
Now having failed to provide any moral support for its imprisoned fellows or their families the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland “welcomes” the release of some doctors and plaintively asks the king ‘“to release those medics who have been sentenced or imprisoned.”
So after 15 months of acquiescing with the corrupt Bahrain authorities, the college finally speaks out when it is too late and after it has denigrated a tradition which those of us who had been associated with the institution were once proud to uphold.
As for the sleeping sister college, the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, which confers a joint licentiate on graduates from RCSI-Bahrain, it prefers to keep its head buried in the desert sand in the mistaken belief that this storm will eventually blow over.
There is, however, another authority that has also remained silent, namely the Medical Council of Ireland, which confers accreditation status on institutions that train doctors; given the circumstances in Bahrain, has the council granted accreditation to RCSI-Bahrain and the Salmaniya Medical Complex where its graduates are trained? – Yours, etc,