Manama: Bahrain on Thursday said that it has released 24 detained doctors and nurses, pending their trial.
The military public prosecutor said that humanitarian conditions have prompted the decision to allow the medical staff to go home.
On May 3, Shaikh Khalid Bin Ali Al Khalifa, the justice minister, said that 23 doctors and 24 nurses would be put on trial on charges that included attempts to topple the country's political regime and abusing the positions.
"Hard evidence showed that the Salmaniya Medical Complex was used extensively for the activities of saboteurs who sought to spread chaos, cause disruptions and troubles and create sedition within the kingdom," the ministry told a press conference.
The account of what happened at the country's largest hospital during the four weeks of the political turmoil varied vastly according to the narrator.
Protestors said that it was used to help professionally the injured during the unrest, but the premises were later turned into a trap to arrest doctors and paramedics.
However, the health and justice authorities insist that the hospital was used as a command centre for the movement to topple Bahrain's regime and that its grounds were turned into camps for demonstrators.
According to the health and justice ministers, doctors and paramedics sympathetic with the protestors got involved in political activities that clashed with their medical status.
