Doctors’ group concerned over Bahraini activist’s worsening health

An independent Danish-based doctors’ group on Wednesday voiced concern over the deteriorating state of health of a leading jailed Bahraini pro-freedom activist who has been on a hunger strike in Bahrain for the past two months.

The International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT) said its doctors found the condition of Abdulhadi al-Khawaja to be very poor.

“As a result of the hunger strike, al-Khawaja is in extremely poor health,” the IRCT

said in a press release.

The IRCT said its Copenhagen-based doctor and an c visited

al-Khawaja ‘in recent days’ to assess his condition.

According to the group, a medical report was currently being finalized and sent to

Bahraini authorities on April 12.

“We were asked to assess al-Khawaja by a Bahraini judge who is a legal adviser to

the (Bahraini) government,” IRCT Head of Communications Scott McAusland told the website of the Danish daily Politiken.

“The Bahraini authorities will then make this report public, as agreed with the doctors,” McAusland says.

The IRCT, which has repeated its call for al-Khawaja’s immediate release, adds that prior to his hunger strike, al-Khawaja was ‘already a documented survivor of torture,” adding that al-Khawaja was “in need of holistic rehabilitation.’

Al-Khawaja who was sentenced with other opposition activists to life in jail over an alleged plot to topple the Bahraini al-Khalifa regime during a month-long protest a year ago, began a hunger strike on the night of February 8-9.

Bahrain’s largest opposition group Al-Wefaq reiterated its calls for his release on Monday in a statement accusing authorities of ‘completely ignoring his deteriorating health which has reached a dangerous stage.’