Bahrain Mirror (Exclusive):A second letter was leaked from the Dry Dock prison to “Bahrain Mirror”. It was written by Ebrahim Al-Demistani the Secretary General of Bahrain Nursing Society. It was written on  9th August 2011.


Al-Demistani was born in 1970. A Chief Nurse in Aluminium Bahrain Company(Alba) and a certified international trainer of trainers from the American First Aid organisation since 2007. He trained hundreds of paramedics from Bahrain and the GCC countries. He carried out scores of workshops in safety and first aids and sprots injuries for Ministry of Education employees. He presented scores of lectures for the school students in their various stages.

During March events, Al-Demistani lost his 17 year old son. In the evening of March 13, 2011, an unidentified car deliberately ran over the young man on the bridge that overlooked the Pearl Roundabout. It fled quickly. That day witnessed volatile events, in the morning the sit-in at the Financial Harbour was attacked, then the Roundabout, and what the university saw of armed people attack. All of that coincided with the spread of organised armed gangs in all the regions of Bahrain. They were labelled Baltagiya (thugs or bullies).

That painful and tragic loss did not stop the regime from arresting Ebrahim Al-Demistani in a systematic intensive campaign that targeted the medical staff who were a thorn in the regime throat that was hard to remove. In his leaked letter, Al-Demistani asked that his letter to be published to tell of the detainees ordeal in the Dry Dock prison, the deliberate negligence of their health care citing what he suffered personally of health care negligence, stressing that others suffered similarly. That was shown in a way or another in the first leaked letter of the psychological, health and physical deterioration that the medical staff experience in the prison.

Al-Demistani explains: “I was beaten directly on the vertebral column and the coccyx bone for seven continuous days since the start of my arrest on 3rd April 2011. I felt horrible pain. After I was taken to the Dry Dock prison on 8th April I was checked up by the clinic doctor there who is a resident doctor. He continued treating me by tranquillisers; Cataflam, Voltaren and PrednIsolone. I felt numbness and tingling in the soles of my feet”. Al-Demistani's excruciating pain was not alleviated. So he frequented the prison clinic.

 But did the treatment plan change? Al-Demistani says in his letter: “I continued to visit that doctor for about 15 to 18 times, without x-raying me or transferring me to a specialist”. He remained all the time suffering pain that he did no identify its cause exactly except he felt it after the torture and harsh beating that he suffered in the first days of his detention. However, the doctor did not bother to make any move to reveal the cause of the pain and the tingling that persisted for about fours months.
 
Al-Demistani added: “Just three weeks ago, I was transferred by the resident doctor in the Dry Dock prison clinic. Today I went for my first physiotherapy session in the hospital at the Fortress. The session took only 15 minutes from 9:00-9:15, then I sat waiting for the bus to go back to the Dry Dock prison. I waited for four complete hours. I asked to lie down because of the severe pain that I was not able to sit any more. I was allowed to lie down in a bed in a ward where a number of hunger strikers detainees from the Central Region were kept”. Al-Demistani added in his letter: “After the doctor in charge came he asked me why am I lying in the bed? I told him of the pain I felt, and that I asked the doctor in the Dry Dock prison clinic to transfer me to an orthopaedic four months ago and till now I was not transferred. The doctor asked the appointments employee to book me an appointment for the following day which was Wednesday 10th August 2011. I was booked that appointment, but after 15 minutes he told me I could see the consultant. I saw Dr. Adel Al-Sheikh an orthopaedic and told him the whole story. He verified the number of my visits to the Dry Dock prison clinic from the computer that numbered 18 visits. After that he ordered an x-ray for me whose result was a fracture in the coccyx bone”.

Now, after four months Al-Demistani came to know that the excruciating pain he endured for four months was because of a fracture in his vertebra. All that time the resident doctor in the Dry Dock prison clinic did not bother to do any check-up to diagnose the cause of the pain that the detainee suffered despite his repetitive visits to no avail.

Al-Demistani wrote that the doctor: “told me at present they can't perform surgically for fear of complications, and he will depend on tranquillisers (Olfer) and physiotherapy, and the fracture needs nine months”. Al-Demstrani colleagues in the prison tell that he cannot sit because of the fracture and he suffers severe pain when sitting or praying.

So Al-Demistani finds himself back-broken twice. The first time when the thugs murdered his young son and he picked his rose a martyr in his hands. The second time when the torturers broke his back and did not care to treat him.