Bahrain: 15 Year Jail Sentences for Medics Who Treated Protesters

After months of detention and a hunger strike, Bahraini medics were released a month ago on bail waiting for their trials. The shock came when the court announced its verdict, sentencing them to 5 to 15 years in jail and accusing them of different charges including threatening public order, possession of weapons, invasion of the country's main hospital, the Salmaniya Medical Complex, and many other fabricated accusations that the regime and its media apparatus have imagined since Bahrain's protests started on February 14, 2011.

The doctors, who have been arrested and subjected to torture because they witnessed the atrocities committed by the state against the protesters first hand, have taken their struggle online, addressing international media and human rights organizations through Twitter and telling the world their stories in their own words. Among them is Dr Nada Dhaif (@NadaDhaif), who was brave enough to talk about what she has been through in jail and send video letters through Amnesty International and BBC to the world, as part of her testimony. Dhaif, who has been sentenced to 15 years, has accused a member of the Bahraini ruling family Nourah Al-Khalifa, in her recent interviews, of torturing her and calling her “a Shia pig.”

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