9-Apr-13: Justice, United Arab Emirates style: The outrageous saga continues

An online South African news site, The Daily Maverick, reports ["Karabus family facing massive financial toll"] on how the astonishing case of the distinguished and retired pediatric specialist Prof. Cyril Karabus was looking this morning. Some excerpts:

• "When Karabus appears in court on Tuesday [today], it is unclear what arguments the prosecution will mount in order to appeal his acquittal – particularly given that the medical committee which examined the case exonerated Karabus of any wrongdoing. “We didn’t realise that there was any basis for an appeal,” Karabus’s daughter Sarah told the Daily Maverick on Monday. “Of course they have the legal right to appeal. But because they won’t tell us what the basis for the appeal is, we can’t prepare any defence until we hear it in court for the first time.”
• "Every day that Karabus remains in the UAE, the cost to his family mounts. “The bills have been over the R2 million mark now,” Sarah Karabus confirmed on Monday. [We estimate that to be about US $225,000 - TOW]... The major part of the detained doctor’s costs are his legal fees, but everyday living expenses in the UAE – where Karabus has been staying with another South African doctor since his release on bail in October –  are also very high.
• "The reason why Karabus took a brief locum shift at the Sheikh Khalifa Medical Centre in Abu Dhabi was that a career spent working in South Africa’s public health system had left him in poor financial shape for his future. For many years, Karabus led the unit of paediatric oncology at Cape Town’s Red Cross Children’s Hospital. He was “very much at the forefront of accessing treatment for South African and African children who needed it”, former colleague Professor Heather Zar told the Daily Maverick last November. “He’s an extremely frugal man. He’s barely bought a new pair of shoes in 15 years,” Sarah Karabus said.
• "When Karabus appears in court on Tuesday, there are a number of potential outcomes. There may be some kind of postponement or delay, as has happened on numerous occasions in the Karabus case before. If the prosecution presents the evidence for an appeal, the defence may have a turn to rebut, or the judge may simply decide to throw the matter out. Sarah Karabus said on Monday that her father was hopeful of the latter.

So here's what happened today.

Prosecution appeal of UAE cancer doctor acquittal delayed  | Haneen Dajani | The National [Abu Dhabi] Apr 9, 2013 | The prosecution appeal against the acquittal of Doctor Cyril Karabus was today delayed at the first hearing. The case has been adjourned until April 23 as no medical translator was present at the Appeals Court today... The reason why prosecutors have appealed the acquittal was not mentioned.

If you have not heard about this infuriating abuse of law and judicial power, please start reading at "8-Apr-13: Medical professionals thinking of working in the world's most expensive open-air prison may want to think again" and work backwards via the links we provide there. 

The things that continue to be done to Prof. Karabus - the victim of an opaque legal system and wrongfully held in the UAE for more than eight months - hold lessons that deserve the widest exposure. That's a point that the World Medical Association's head, in a new article called "Just Delayed, Justice Denied – Again: The Case of Cyril Karabus" makes today forcefully and well.

8-Apr-13: Medical professionals thinking of working in the world's most expensive open-air prison may want to think again

South African websites and news channels (like TimesLive)
are reporting on the "global fallout" from the Karabus case. We
think they have an optimistic view of how much the authorities in the
UAE even care.

Regular readers of this blog will have followed our numerous postings here about the unresolved drama of a retired South African oncologist entrapped in the medieval law-order-and-blood-money system of the United Arab Emirates. 

For a summary: "21-Mar-13: Is Prof Karabus finally being released and going home?"; "29-Jan-13: UAE "Justice" officials fiddle: The scandalous treatment of Prof. Karabus goes on and on"; and "1-Jan-13: Prof. Cyril Karabus faces his thirteenth hearing in a United Arab Emirates court tomorrow". 

Though never actually put on trial in the way most people would understand the word, Prof. Cyril Karabus was convicted in his absence, without any knowledge of the existence of the absurd charges, more than a decade ago. In August 2012, entirely unaware of the danger, he was seized at Dubai airport when, as an airline passenger passing through on Emirates, he was traveling home to SA from the wedding of his son in Canada. He was immediately arrested and put in prison.

Since then, the experiences to which the distinguished doctor, 77 years old at the time of the arrest, has been subjected have gone from bad to scandalous to outrageous. It could have been scripted by Franz Kafka.

He has been held by the UAE authorities against his will for eight months so far. Initially this was in a bare Abu Dhabi prison cell within a particularly notorious prison. After numerous frustrated attempts to secure bail in court, he was eventually released from prison after two months minus his confiscated passport. He was ordered not to leave the UAE and required by force of law to remain as an involuntary paying visitor and separated from his family in what is probably the world's most expensive open-air prison.

Since his well-being depends in some measure on the goodwill of the government of South Africa, we will refrain here from analyzing what was and was not done to represent his cause on a government-to-government basis. The bottom line: he is still there, held against his will, and burning through his dwindling resources.

Some weeks ago, the sole tribunal of fact in this case - some kind of medical committee appointed by some kind of authority and with the court's knowledge - came back to the court with a finding, somewhat delayed after months of investigation but a finding in every sense of the word. Their conclusion: Prof. Karabus is absolved of all blame for the death of the terminally-ill child he had treated in an Abu Dhabi hospital 13 years earlier. Case closed.

But unfortunately it was not closed. Instead of grabbing the opportunity to climb down from the tree, the Abu Dhabi authorities - having led no evidence, having conceded that the original medical file cannot be found, having essentially incarcerated an innocent man with a proud career of saving children's lives on the flimsiest of bases for months, availed themselves of the technical right to appeal against the court's finding of innocent.

In a more-normal, due-process-oriented democratic society with a free press and responsible, elected political leadership (we are obviously not referring to Abu Dhabi or Dubai or any other corner of the UAE), the much-aggrieved Prof. Karabus would have been given back his passport the same day along with profound apologies and a complementary pass to Dubai airport's most VIP lounge.

Instead, the man continues to be the victim of a disgraceful abuse of power. The UAE authorities presiding over it and making capricious and unchecked decisions at every step bear most of the responsibility. But given the honor-based culture in which they operate, it does no one much good to focus on what has gone wrong there.

This is, after all, happening in the UAE, officially classified by The Economist's Democracy Index 2012 as an authoritarian regime and ranked 19th from the bottom out of a list of 167 countries. Its overall Democracy Index score of 2.58 positions it just ahead of Zimbabwe and behind Afghanistan. Nice neighbourhood!

So what can be done? The World Medical Association says it is doing what it can.

Global fallout over Karabus | April 8 2013 at 09:52 am | Caryn Dolley, Cape Times | In an unprecedented move triggered by the Cyril Karabus case, the World Medical Association (WMA) will advise physicians around the globe about the risks of working in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It has encouraged its 102 member countries to do the same in a decision made at a WMA council meeting in Bali late last week. At first, the SA Medical Association (Sama) pushed for the world association to call for health workers to boycott the UAE, but it settled on the advisory instead... On Sunday, in a phone interview with the Cape Times, Karabus said he was set to appear in a UAE court again on Tuesday. He said he had been told about the WMA advisory and while he hoped it would have an impact, he did not believe it would affect UAE authorities. “I don’t think they care … I don’t think they’ll take too much notice,” Karabus said. He believed a call for medics to boycott the UAE would have been more effective and possibly make authorities take note. [Mzukisi Grootboom of the South African Medical Association] said even though the WMA did not agree to the boycott of the UAE, the advisory to physicians about the risks of working there was a step forward. The WMA had agreed to (a) Publish the advisory on its website. (b) Alert its 102 member countries, spread across North and South America, west and east Europe, Asia and some African countries, of the advisory. (c) Publish the advisory in the World Medical Journal. On Sunday, Karabus’s South African lawyer Michael Bagraim said he had been receiving e-mails from medical associations “across the globe”. He said if Karabus was detained even longer, it could seriously impact on health workers travelling to the UAE. “It looks very strongly that doctors worldwide would boycott going there,” Bagraim said. [Cape Times]

The South African media, reporting on the medical conference decision, are calling it a global fallout. We of course wish them well with their efforts, but if the aim is to bring pressure on Abu Dhabi and Dubai, then they need to understand how the darker and more repressive corners of the Arab world work. After diligent searching, how many news channels in the Arab world in general and in the UAE in particular have even reported on the World Medical Association's Karabus-inspired 'advisory'? Answer: Not one as of today. (And if we are wrong on this, we will be delighted to hear from you.)

Health professionals attracted by the shine and glitz of Dubai and Abu Dhabi and by jobs promoted on sites like this, this, this and this should be warned ahead of time about just how different the UAE and its authoritarian regimes are from the world they know.

18-May-07: Sick, in the medical sense of the word

We're indebted to our friend David Frankfurter for this insightful comment on a little-reported disgrace this week (the background is here).

David's Letter from Israel blog is always worth reading. Here's what he posted yesterday:

Clean bill of health? It is rare that one of the so-called "human rights" NGOs that support Palestinian terror are openly exposed. Watchdog NGO Monitor has reported the tendency of Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) "members [to] exploit this NGO for political goals including unsupported attacks on Israel in contradiction to the pledge to maintain independence from political powers." Of particular concern to NGO Monitor is the specialist's diagnosis: Israeli actions degrade Palestinian health care. Of course, Palestinian violence and terror that make the protective actions necessary do not form part of the medical record. It seems that the mental and physical health of Israeli civilians does not even get an appointment.
Today, Albawaba Middle East news service reports: Medecins sans Frontieres has been infected by the terror virus.
Palestinian charged with plan to kill Olmert
17-05-2007 , 09:12 GMT
A Palestinian man was charged Thursday in Jerusalem District Court with gathering intelligence as part of a plan to assassinate Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Masa'b Bashir, a 25-year-old resident of Dir el-Balah in the Gaza Strip, has a valid entry permit into Israel due to his work with the organization "Doctors without Borders," the Tel Aviv-based Haaretz newspaper reported. The planning for the assassination was conducted at the initial level only, and did not become operational, the report added. Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) activists in Dir el-Balah allegedly recruited Bashir, and dispatched him to gather intelligence on the security arrangements at the Prime Minister's Residence in Jerusalem. He visited the site several times, and informed his PFLP handlers that the tight security would not permit the successful assassination of Olmert. At a later stage, the PFLP decided to kill an Israeli working in archeological excavations in East Jerusalem. As part of that plan, Bashir allegedly underwent training in martial arts and firing a handgun.
Instead of their ongoing negative prognosis, Medicines sans Frontiers would be better giving a second opinion on the free medical treatment Israeli hospitals and doctors so frequently provide our Palestinian Arab neighbours.

To David's comments we would add these:

1. Anyone with a sick child in this country, and who who regularly visits Israeli pediatric wards -- and that unfortunately includes the writers of this blog -- knows what the foreign reporters and visiting politicians never seem to know: that the number of Arab families seeking and getting the best possible medical care in the entire region are greatly over-represented in those wards, far out of proportion to their numbers in Israeli society. Whom does this bother? No-one, certainly not Israelis. In Jerusalem, where our youngest child has needed prolonged hospital care almost all her life, we can report from personal knowledge that in the children's wards you will routinely see close to half or more than half of the patients, and the same proportion of families and visitors, drawn from the Arab segments of Israeli society. So what? So what does this tell you about the "genocidal" designs of Israeli against Arabs in general and Pal-Arabs in particular?
2. For people wanting to let MSF know how they feel, knowing that a MSF doctor is an active Jew-hating terrorist, here are some contact details.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders)Rue de Lausanne 78 (CP 116)
1211Geneva 21 Switzerland
Tel: +41 (22) 849.84.00
Fax: +41 (22) 849.84.04
office-gva@geneva.msf.org
Media contacts:
Aymeric Péguillan (fr/en/es)
Tél: +41 (0) 22 849 84 87 Mobile: +41 (0) 79 784 57 32
Email: aymeric.peguillan@geneva.msf.org
Aurélie Grémaud (fr/en)
Tél: +41 (0) 22 849 84 49 Mobile: 00 33 6 62 87 27 48
Email: aurelie.gremaud@geneva.msf.org
Raphael Weber (de/en/fr)
Tel. + 41 (0) 44 385 94 41 Mobile: +41 (0) 79 206 46 58
E-mail: raphael.weber@geneva.msf.org