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	Grim Testimony reveals state crackdown on medical staff by The Independent / UK Bahrain   Apr 2011   Harrowing testimony of torture, intimidation and humiliation from a doctor arrested in the crackdown on medical staff in Bahrain has revealed the lengths to which the regime"s security forces are prepared to go to quash pro-democracy protests.   Interviews obtained by The Independent from inside Bahrain tell of ransacked hospitals and of terrified medical staff beaten, interrogated and forced into signing false confessions. Many have been detained, their fate unknown.   Inspired by the pro-democracy protests which swept Tunisia and Egypt earlier this year, Bahrainis took to the streets in their thousands in February, calling for greater political rights and more equality for the Shia Muslim majority, ruled over for decades by a Sunni monarchy.   The state launched a fierce counter-offensive in mid-March, brutally crushing the uprising with the backing of Saudi security forces.   The campaign of intimidation against the doctors and nurses who bore witness to the bloody crackdown began two months ago at Salmaniya Medical Complex, the main hospital in the capital Manama. It has since been extended to at least nine health centres which have been systematically attacked by the security forces over the past month, an activist cataloguing the abuses says.   Each incident follows the same pattern: police jeeps surround the centre, before armed men and women in masks close the gates and line all those caught inside up against the wall.   The latest crackdown followed protests by doctors at the refusal by the regime to allow ambulances from Salmaniya Hospital to attend to those injured in the protests.   Details of the assaults, show that at least 40 medical staff were arrested in nine health centres between 10 April and 27 April.   Dr Ahmed Jamal, president of the Bahrain Medical Society, was arrested at his clinic on 2 May.   One consultant and family physician described in an email how she had been beaten, abused and humiliated and left with a black eye and bruises on her back during a seven-hour detention at the Central Province Police centre. Fearing for the safety of her children, she asked to remain anonymous.   Relatives of those detained said some were forced to confess to acts they had not committed, with those confessions filmed by the security forces for subsequent broadcast.   The daughter of one doctor said: "They were made to confess that they gave treatment only to Shia protesters and not to Sunnis, stole blood from the hospital to splatter on protesters to make the situation seem more dramatic, and that they encouraged others to protest against the regime."   Rights activists say medical officials have been targeted because they bore witness to the terrible injuries sustained by the protesters they treated, and could therefore give evidence against the government. Forty-seven doctors and nurses were charged last week.   Vivienne Nathanson, head of ethics at the British Medical Association, said the attacks on medical staff in Bahrain were unprecedented.   "I don"t think we have seen it on this scale before. It is very worrying because doctors and health workers have an ethical duty to treat people regardless of what they have been doing and the state has an obligation to protect them. All the doctors have been doing is saying these people need care and they have got to give care. They are not saying the protesters are right," she said.
	Rwanda: UN genocide tribunal sentences former army chief to 30 years’ jail by UN News & agencies   May 2011   The United Nations tribunal set up after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda has convicted the country’s former army chief of committing numerous war crimes and sentenced him to 30 years in prison.   Augustin Bizimungu, who served as chief of staff of the Rwandan armed forces, was found guilty of six counts of genocide, crimes against humanity for murder, extermination and rape and violations of articles of the Geneva Conventions.   But the three-judge panel at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) acquitted him on a count of conspiracy to commit genocide and dismissed a charge of complicity to commit genocide.   Prosecutors told the tribunal that Mr. Bizimungu had been instrumental in the organization of the genocide, in which an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slain – often by machete – in less than 100 days starting in April 1994.   He reportedly gave an order to “exterminate the small cockroaches” on the first day of the genocide.   Three other senior military officers were found guilty today of similar war crimes charges in the same trial as that of Mr. Bizimungu.   François-Xavier Nzuwonemeye, who served as commander of the Reconnaissance battalion in the Rwandan army, and Innocent Sagahutu, his second-in-command, were each sentenced to 20 years in prison.   Augustin Ndindiliyimana, who was chief of staff of the national gendarmerie, will be released after he was sentenced to the time he has served in prison since his arrest in Belgium in January 2000.   The main survivors organisation condemned the ruling on Ndindiliyimana as too light. He and Bizimungu are among the most senior figures to be tried by the Tanzania-based tribunal for the genocide in which 800,000 people, mostly Tutsis, were killed.   The court found Bizimungu had complete control over the men he commanded, who were involved in the massacres that started in the night of April 6, 1994.   It also found him guilty of making a speech on April 7, 1994, several days before he was made army chief, that called for the killing of ethnic Tutsis.   Rwanda"s prosecutor general, Martin Ngoga, says the army chiefs could have prevented the genocide had they wanted to.   "Sentencing the army officers is particularly important because if the army had wanted, genocide would not have occurred. The army deviated from its role," he said.   The tribunal sentenced two other senior officers to 20 years in jail for war crimes and crimes against humanity for ordering the murder of prime minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana. The judges found the officers instructed an armoured unit to kill Uwilingiyimana and made no attempt to punish the soldiers who also killed the Belgian UN Blue Helmets protecting her.   The killing of the Belgians triggered the withdrawal of the UN force stationed in Rwanda..
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