Bahrain Mirror (Exclusive)

Ibtisam Saleh - Bahrain

Perhaps we were lucky to make this interview, as our interviewee is now again behind bars. In Bahrain Mirror, last year, we decided during the month of Ramadhan to write all the medics biographies. We consider their tragedy different from all the tragedies that bereft our people. They deserve that people know about them. We drew out a plan. Ebrahim Al-Demstani was among them. We did not know, neither did he, that it was only a short break out of prison. We met with him, and had long talks. When we went to edit his interview we found his talk eloquent and full of bitterness. We eliminated our questions and left the wonderful narrative that he demonstrated. In this part of his story Al-Demistani presents the details of his arrest, how he was arrested, to where he was taken, the officers who supervised his torture… and where! Let's leave him talk.

Al-Demistani before 14 February

 On 18 March 2010 Al-Demistani was jailed for seven days pending further investigation. The case: The treatment of an injured by bird shotguns pellets in his home. The place: Karzakan village. The charge: Abuse of profession and providing cover up for an injured who was accused of illegal gathering. However, the American First Aid Organisation honoured Al-Demistani for his role in rescuing an injured in Karzakan.

He works as a nursing supervisor in Alba (Aluminum Bahrain) Medical Centre. His last certification was the International License in First Aid from Medic First Aid International. He was the second one in the Gulf region to get that certification after Rula Al-Saffar.

He had the role of the Chief of Alba Workers Union (2002-2005). He is a licensed trainer of trainers from the American First Aid organisation since November 2007. He has trained thousands of first aiders since 1991. Before he was imprisoned again he had continued to train people under the project of “First Aider for Every Home”, it is one of the Bahrain Nursing Society and Bahrain Red Crescent projects that had started before 14 February 2011.

Blasted head and handcuffed body

training course in First Aid

On 11 February 2011 in Daih area, both Al-Demistani and Dr. Ali Al-Ekri carried out a training course in First Aid. “After calls to revolution, we anticipated the need to train the people in first aid” Al-Demistani said.  After the escalation of the events and the protesters sit-in at the Pearl Roundabout on 15 February, “I saw my normal role to be in the medical tent. Doctors Ali Al-Ekri and Sadeq Al-Ekri were there as well. In the beginning the tent was not organised and was not well-equipped either. Nada Dhaif was supervising it.”

Al-Demistani continued: “On Wednesday night of 16 February I was in the medical tent. I stayed the night there with my sons Ali and Jaafar. In the dawn at 2:30, the police vehicles started to encircle the Roundabout and they stationed themselves close to Al-Montazah supermarket and on the bridge overlooking the Roundabout. At 3:15 they started shooting and shelling. People rushed to the medical tent thinking that it was a safe place. We started to suffocate. We had no masks. Ali Al-Ekri left the tent in his white coat, he was not attacked. However, the police forces attacked the medics in the tent, among them the nurse Zainab and they molested the women. Then there was a power outage.”

“I was worried about my sons Ali and Jaafar. They were in a tent close to Al-Montazah. I was worried more about Ali as he was a heavy sleeper and was difficult to wake him up. I knew from Jaafar that he had fled towards Burhama area and hidden in one of the houses. While Ali headed towards Manama to hide in a Pakistani policeman house, he was unlucky; he was able to escape that policman’s grip to a bus stop and mixed with the Asians waiting for the bus pretending that he was one of them.”

“After long suffering, I drove my car to Salmaniya Medical Complex, I saw an old man at the Gufool traffic lights wanting to go to Salmaniya, I picked him up. At Salmaniya hospital, I rode an ambulance to go to the Roundabout. The police prevented us from getting closer. It was around seven in the morning. We were worried that the tents might have fallen on children or there might have been people who were suffocating and needed help. We went back to Salmaniya.”

“I saw martyr Ali Khudair body in the Emergency. His hands were handcuffed. One foot was clad in a sock and shoe, the other was bare. It looked that they didn’t give him a chance to put on the other shoe. They handcuffed and then fired at him. It was said that he was trying to protect his family.”

The day my son was murdered

On 13 March, the thugs attacked the University of Bahrain. That was declared at the Roundabout. My son Ali got emotional and left with his friends to the university. I went there after them in an ambulance. The thugs attacked the medics. The police surrounded the university campus. We were forced to go to Roundabout 17 in Hamad Town. The wounded were lying on the ground.

Martyr Ali Ebrahim Demistani

My son Ali and I returned home. We had lunch. After that I went to Salmaniya hospital and Ali went to the Roundabout. At seven in the evening I heard that Ali had a car accident. It was while he was going out with his friends to defend the villages of Duraz and Bani Jamra from the thugs attacks.

While they were leaving close to Dana Mall, a car came suddenly in front of them and crashed into them. The crash was mainly on Ali’s side. The accident happened at 5 in the afternoon, but I heard of it two hours later. I went to Bahrain International Hospital. I restrained my fatherhood passion, and let my professionalism take reign of me. He was suffering an internal hemorrhage and negligence in treatment. The tube to the lung was not placed in the proper manner. The cardiopulmonary resuscitation was incorrect. I participated in the CPR. Despite the acute hemorrhage he suffered, he was not given a drop of blood.

We took him to Salmaniya Hospital, Ali Al-Ekri received us and supervised his treatment. However, the chance to rescue him was lost in the first hospital. The brain cells were damaged by hemorrhage and it was impossible to recover them. The heart could be made to beat the activators, but that was not enough. His life would have been saved, had he been taken to Salmaniya Hospital.

Dr. Ali Al-Ekri was worried that I might have collapsed though I dealt with my son as an injured who needed care. Fatherhood feeling was suspended or postponed. I did not know how that happened. Ali’s body was taken to the Morgue. I took two tablets of Haloperidol and Valium which sedated me into deep sleep that protected me from collapse.

Al-Demistani before 14th February

I was arrested from the Medical Centre in Alba (Aluminum Bahrain Company) Hospital where I worked. I was on my way to my shift in the afternoon at 2:30 of Monday 4 April 2011. Once I rode the car, I was confronted with the question of "How much is your salary?" I answered honestly: "More than a thousand!" I arrived at the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and the same question was repeated. There was sort of unanimity among the rank and file to ask that question. I was asked that question repeatedly for a week, from the warden, the Pakistani policeman, to the officer. Was that reasonable?
Once they shoved me in the car, and before we left Alba, I was blindfolded and I was handcuffed to the back. They had an obnoxious way to humiliate. You heard one of them sympathising with you saying: "Nobody should beat or slap him", however, suddenly you got a kick from one of them. I felt that I stood in a corridor until 4:15. I was taken to Officer Mubarak Ben Huwail as he was in charge of the medics file. He immediately threatened me: "Demistani, save yourself and confess, it would be better for you, save yourself like Abdulkhaleq Al-Oraibi."
                            
He meant Dr. Abdulkhaleq Al-Oraibi the rheumatism specialist. Perhaps Dr. Al-Oraibi did not confess of anything, it was just a mental attack to defeat me. Before I responded, I weighed my words before talking and focused my criticism on the Minister of Health which they did not want anyhow. I passed hints of accusations saying: "There was long time conflict between the Minister of Health and Bahrain Nursing Society since the days the society tried to develop the nurses work scale pay. That conflict reached the courts." Then I turned to the main subject: "The medics were attacked and the Minister didn't take any measure. Neither did he take any legal or moral actions. The ambulances were prevented from reaching the injured by the Ministry of Interior."

Ben Huwail got angry and screamed: "Go, change your statement!" When they returned me to him the second time I said: "We went into a march against the Minister of Health for preventing the ambulances." and replied: "Still you refuse to talk, after three days you will confess by force."

I was taken to a torture chamber. I felt I was standing in a place similar to wood store or something like that. They started their insulting attacks. "Traitors, rejections (derogatory term for Shai), conspirators, lackeys of Iran, Magi, and sons of Muta'a (Shia temporary marriage)". There was the orthopedic consultant Dr. Ali Al-Ekri whose screams of pain I heard as well as Dr. Mahmood Asghar and the martyr Ali Saqr. They did not do anything to me. They made me hear the screams of the tortured. Then Noora Al-Khalifa came and attacked us in an abusive language. We remained standing. A goodhearted Yemenite policeman (from Shia Zaidi) was sympathising with us: "Were you in the hospital, my Allah make it easy on you!" He brought me a chair and let me sit in.

There, all the torturers were Bahrainis. Ben Huwail came to them and ordered them to stick pieces of paper on our backs written on them abusive words or names of animals, for instance "Donkey…."

This way our confessions were extracted

The aim of torturing us was humiliation, confession of having arms, to confess that a particular doctor made a wound larger, to confess that Dr. Saeed Al-Samaheeji gouged an injured eye, or we took Pakistanis as hostages… ect. of nonsense.

We were made to stand continuously; our only chance to sit down was the meal time, when the blindfold would be lifted slightly just to see the plate. We were not allowed to pray. We badly needed to go to the toilets, we got that after humiliation. I was in a torture chamber with four doctors. I felt the place was a small room, while torture was handed to us in turns.

We remained in that place for three days, then we were moved to a larger place. We were a mixture of humiliated tortured. Dr. Nader Diwani was with us, Dr. Ahmed Al-Imran, the ambulance driver Ameer Al-Hamali, in addition to Al-Areen group who were accused of going to the University of Bahrain on 13 March. They were arrested from their work at Al-Areen.

Usually the torture starts from 6 in the morning until 6 in the evening. However, the cruelest torture starts after midnight. Their enjoyment gets up at midnight. Their objective was to break us, to break the flame of resistance and steadfastness to leave us broken souls and bodies. They exercised a grudge that was under a lid and then it found its chance to act like a wild monster. When they asked you: "How much is your salary?" They wanted to compare your salary to theirs. They claim they are the defenders of the homeland and the King who got little salaries compared to the enemies of the regime. They did not consider those salaries as a reward of hard work and proportionate hard gained qualifications and experience but a gift and endowment form the their masters.
 
The regime wanted to deepen the difference in salaries not the hard earned status to convert that into a simmering hatred that they poured on us such that they did not feel any guilt of that torture nor regret.

They got pleasure of insulting us with abusive sectarian language. They wanted to crush our psyches. Thinking that in their sick minds they are able to smash all the achievement that had been performed by those hard working doctors. That was why they forced us to imitate animals sounds or dance disrespectfully, forcing us to say offensive language against the protest movement leaders or any religious figurehead that we respected.

The least of the humiliation was asking us to chant the royal anthem, however, most of us do not memorise it. Anyone who was able to sing or memorise it, would get a reward of 5-10 minutes of sitting that ended in an angry scream of: "Stand up!"

My legs were not able to carry me so I fell to the floor

It was the seventh day sunrise. We were still standing without bathing, without sleep and without contacting a lawyer. They took us for questioning again, to increase the doze of torture and terror. They beat us by fists on the back and electrocuted us on the ears. They beat us on the knees and legs by cables. They would choose sensitive and painful areas until I bled on blue swollen skin to the extent that I could not step on the floor because a nerve supply to the leg was injured. I was beaten on the coccyx bone; it broke and separated after the repeated focused kicks that it sustained. In my reflexive reaction to pain I thrust my trunk forward so they increased their kicks on my back. I did not endure that pain. My legs were not able to carry me so I fell down. I asked to go to hospital, but they rejected as they considered it a pretense of pain to avoid being tortured. I played that I was suffocating. I was taken to the Fortress Hospital. On the way, the sun light touched my body; I relished its pleasant warmth. I wished it had taken me under its permanent light.

In the Fortress clinic, there was a cruel Bahraini man. He accompanied me from the CID to hospital; he did not allow me to lie on my back. He interfered even in the doctors' work. They x-rayed me, however, the doctor did not diagnose me, and did not give me any medicine either. A Salafist man who accompanied me with that cruel man took pity on me and brought me Voltaren painkillers from his home.

Ben Huwail, the master of terror

Officer Mubarak Ben Huwail

We were blindfolded. They guided us like the blind with sullen-voiced directives: "Walk… A step is front of you..", or they would drag us saying: "Run". I was not in a shape to run. I was taken to Officer Ben Huwail's office. I knew him from their respect to him, from his arrogance. I came to know his face when he came as a witness against us in the National Security courts. He was the master of terror. He was in control of the violations and abuse. They would pass you among a column of tortures who would slap, kick or insult you.

We used to move our fingers as our wrists were moaning of the handcuffs pain. That fingers movements increased the blood circulation which alleviated the pain slightly. We resorted to prayers, which made us strong and enduring.

After that continuous exhaustion, you got forced to surrender to escape that agony. You would say what they forced you to. At the end, I calculated it. "Why all that headache?" let them hear what they wished. Legally, they would not make use of it because of the absence of a lawyer. There would be a court and I can deny anything as far as it was extracted under the fire of their whips.

His job was to make us hear the tortured screams

After a torture session with Ben Huwail, we were taken to another interrogator whose name we did not know. His job was to make us hear the medics while being tortured. I heard the screams of the Rula Al-Saffar. I interrupted Ebrahim Al-Demistrani: "How was her endurance?" He replied: "She writhed under beatings, but she didn't give answers, she denied everything, saying I don't know, I didn't hear of that..ect."

After each torture session we would be returned to Ben Huwail. I was in his office three or four times. Beside me stood one of the cruelest torturers whose job was to surprise me by a hard blow on the neck as a punishment for an answer they did not like. Then he would threaten: "You will get another blow, if you try to lie again!" The blows would keep landing on me. So I was forced to say: "I saw weapons in the ambulances that Bahrain TV showed, and Bahrain TV doesn't lie!" I said: "A wireless device connected to the Iranian embassy was installed in the Emergency Department. I saw Rula Al-Saffar pouring bags of blood on the wounded, all that to entice the public to demand the fall down of the regime!"

Those false confessions and others that I was forced to say under torture came in 40 pages they asked me to sign.

On the eighth day of detention, they brought me a statement to sign. They lifted the blindfold a bit just to see where to sign, in order to send it to the Military Prosecution. Then they took us four times for interrogation to sign edited confessions. Every time they edited them to make our confessions consistent. We did not hesitate to sign as far as the interrogation was illegal.

In the Military Prosecution, I used to hear screams of pain from Dr. Rulla Al-Saffar, Dr. Mahmood Asghar and Dr. Ali Al-Ekri. The interrogators would say: "You hear them, do you like to be like them?" I did not know their screams that broke my heart helped me in my agony or increased my pain and pity on them and me. During that time, after all the pain and exhaustion there was no room to think or to change anything in your statement. You would get a change to pick your breath when you were allowed to sit down. One of them asked me: "Do you want water or a cigarette?" In fact, you would get water, even a cigarette if you were a smoker to repeat the same confession. It was a mere trick to hint the end of torture, as the tortures would be waiting for us in the torture chambers.

• Link to the Arabic copy
• Link to part Two
• Link to part Three
• Link to part Four