REUTERS AFRICA: MANAMA - Bahrain said on Tuesday it would charge a number of medical workers with causing the death of two demonstrators, broadening a crackdown on the opposition in the wake of protests that shook the Gulf island kingdom.
Human rights groups say Sunni-led Bahrain has targeted doctors and medical staff who aided mostly-Shi'ite protesters during anti-government demonstrations it crushed in March. It brought in troops from Sunni-led Gulf Arab neighbours who feared potential interference from non-Arab Shi'ite power Iran.
Justice Minister Khaled bin Ali al-Khalifa told reporters 47 medical staff would face charges, including about two dozen doctors. Not all would be prosecuted for causing the protesters deaths, but he did not say how many would face such charges.
He said the two protesters died because staff inflicted additional wounds on them or gave unneeded treatments.
"The medical profession was strongly abused during this period," he said.
The U.S.-based rights group Physicians for Human Rights that sent a fact-finding mission into Bahrain last month rejected the government's account of events.
"The results of our findings were pointing to a wholly different conclusion," the group's Deputy Director Richard Sollom told Reuters. » | Frederik Richter | Tuesday, May 03, 2011
