Beware of becoming a confidential informant while being a doctor
On Thursday 19/03/2009 I represented Al Nadeem centre while visiting Tamer Mohamed Abbas -a victim of Police Officer ‘A’ at Al Gameel passage- after news of the incident was published in Al Badeel newspaper.
I arrived at Port Said General Hospital with Mr Hany El Gebaly and Ms. Hanem Ibrahim who are both lawyers from the Mousawa Centre for Human Rights in Port Said. This was at about 4:00PM during the hospital’s official visiting hours.
After 10 minutes a doctor from the hospital arrived and introduced himself to us as the Vice President of the hospital, a female doctor introduced herself while the young male doctor started accusing us of being “unwanted” visitors, and saying that we had to follow official procedure. I was surprised, as I came in through the main entrance and not through the window. We came during official visiting hours and no other visitors were being treated the same way. The doctor moved to the side and started talking on his mobile phone.
After a few minutes he disappeared and two men came, one of whom is a former police officer who had been tried and convicted of attempted murder in the town of Ismailia. He was sentenced to three years imprisonment but the victim dropped the charges and he did not complete serving one year of his sentence. The hospital employed him in security regardless of his bad record.
He headed towards Tamer’s visitors, screaming and cursing at Mr Hany El Gebaly. A formal complaint was made of this incident at the prosecutor’s office.
This is a new attempt to harass Human Rights Activists, leading them in to a quarrel which can lead to injury.
This is an official complaint from the doctor against his female colleague who was fulfilling her humanitarian duty.
This is a change in the role of a doctor from someone who is supposed to be caring and supportive to someone who sacrifices his patient’s health for a police officer who is involved in more than one incident of torture of citizens. One of whom is sleeping in a hospital bed with his lower left extremity buried in plaster and an injury to his arm at the elbow joint, which appears to be twisted, but is left without any form of stabilization, not even to ease the pain.
It is important to note that Tamer’s only mistake was testifying about an incident of torture of a disabled man by the name of Ahmed Ramadan. He saw him tied to a tree without any clothes on, and the Police Officer beating him with a wooden stick in the Al Gameel Passage. His conscience did not allow him to conceal his testimony from the investigation. The assault on Tamer is how the Police Officer dealt with concealing his first crime.
What has happened is against the ethics of our profession and breaks the oath a doctor takes on the day of his graduation from medical school. It is a violation of all human rights norms, national laws and international conventions on patient care in general and on the care of a victim of torture specifically.
This is not the first time I have encountered this behaviour from a doctor, but it is the worst behaviour I have come across on our visits to public hospitals.
As God is my witness, this testimony has been sent to the Doctor’s Syndicate and to many doctors and workers in the health profession.
Dr Magda Adly
Al Nadeem Centre