Bahrain, Syria, Libya (and Beyond) LiveBlog: The Doctors Go on Trial

2046 GMT: An activist posts this photo online, claiming to show a pharmacist, who fled from Jisr al-Shughour in Syria and set up this "clinic."

2024 GMT: In Yemen, hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets in every major city, calling for the arrest of the family and close advisors of President Saleh (see videos below). There were protests reported in Hadramawt, Hodeida, Ibb, Damar and Saada, as well as Taiz (the second largest city in Yemen) and the nation's capital, Sana'a. 

Tens of thousands of protesters also gathered outside of Vice President Hadi's residence, vowing to stay until he establishes a transitional council.

President Saleh's health is still debatable, but according to one official, he is having an undisclosed problem with his throat. 

1942 GMT: Al Jazeera documents regime thugs beating peaceful protesters in Damascus, and the cries of women and children in Jisr al-Shughour. 

1937 GMT: Liberia is now the latest country to withdraw diplomatic recognition of the Gaddafi regime:

"The Government took the decision after a careful review of the situation in Libya and determined that the Government of Colonel Gaddafi has lost the legitimacy to govern Libya."

1929 GMT: As Syrian tanks approach the eastern town of Deir Ezzor, the Arab League has released a statement condemning the violence in Syria. The Assad regime, however, dismisses the condemnation as politically motivated. The Syrian envoy even suggested that outgoing Arab LEague Secretary General, Amr Moussa, was advocating military intervention in Syria:

"Days before leaving his post, Moussa calls for a kind of foreign intervention in the Syrian affairs, when the Libyan blood, shed by Nato air strikes as a result for a [UN] security council resolution, based, regrettably on an Arab demand in which Moussa's efforts immensely contributed, isn't dry yet," he said.

1921 GMT: NATO has stepped up efforts to discourage Gaddafi's soldiers by dropping leaflets to warn them that Apache helicopters will be mowing them down. The problem: they dropped the leaflets over rebel positions near Misurata.

"Thousands of leaflets were sprinkled from a bomb that detonated above no man's land east of the city, raining down over rebel units who had moved their frontline five miles forward from the shattered village of Dafniya. The rebels had apparently neglected to tell Nato about the move."

The rebels have retreated, and though NATO disuptes the claim, the development could hamper forward progress near the town, according to rebel commanders. 

1913 GMT: Legal Brief --- Earlier we wrote that Robert Fisk has condemned the Bahraini government's accounts of what has happened since protests have broken out there (see update at 1105). Well, Bahrain's government didn't like Mr. Fisk's writing, and they have commisioned a British legal firm to sue Fisk's news agency. 

1826 GMT: Turkey has arrested 32 people, accused of attacking government websites while working for the hacker group Anonymous. In response to Turkey's plan to heavily filter internet access, Anonymous announced that it would add Turkey to a list of locations to attack. Last week, several government websites were shut down by cyber-attacks. 

1820 GMT: Members of the opposition movement in Egypt have met with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) to protests military trials for civilians. SCAF has agreed to revisit the military sentences made since February, and they have committed to investigating claims of human rights abuses, but SCAF has stopped short of admitting any wrong-doing. 

1733 GMT: Demonstrators in Idlib province, Syria, congratulate Turkish PM Erdogan on his win in the recent elections. Erdogan has been praised because, as a close ally to Syria, he has been critical of Assad's crackdown against protesters.

1726 GMT: High ranking members of the Egyptian government have condemned the plan for the United States to fund the democratic transition:

"I am not sure at this stage we still need somebody to tell us what is or is not good for us—or worse, to force it on us," Fayza Aboul Naga, who has been Egypt's minister for planning and international cooperation since before the revolution, told The Wall Street Journal.

However, US officials have expressed doubt that these concerns are legitimate, inferring that the current government of Egypt is largely the same as it was before, and the policies are the same as well.

In late April, U.S. Ambassador Margaret Scobey said in a statement that in the Mubarak era, "funding to strengthen and expand Egypt's civil society, including those brave Egyptians struggling for democracy and human rights…was often labeled 'interference.'…I hope, after January 25, this line has changed."

1521 GMT: Earlier, we noted fears of growing sectarian divisions in Syria (1319 GMT), and possible Iranian involvement there. The Guardian has posted a link to a story on Al Arabiya (A Saudi news agency that we follow, but with caution), claiming to show two Iranian soldiers captured by the opposition in Syria:

"The sound quality is poor and the words indistinct but they can be heard clearly saying they worked for "military security". They are speaking Arabic in an accent that suggests they are from Ahwaz, capital of the Arabic-speaking area of south-western Iran known as Khuzestan."

1509 GMT; Earlier, we posted a picture of women protesting in Taiz, Yemen. Now we have this video of large-scale protests demanding the formation of a transitional council. 

1504 GMT: In Hama, Syria, the Union of Doctors, Engineers, and Lawyers take to the streets today.

Students in Hama also protest today after leaving their exams.

1459 GMT: The Canadian government will recognize the National Transitional Council as the official representatives of the Libya people. Foreign Minister John Baird is also pledging an additional $2 million in humanitarian assistance.

1437 GMT: A Shi'a doctor in Bahrain has criticized the conditions that doctors are living under, many of who are in prison:

One of the doctors, who was released earlier (but went to trial), said that during his arrest, they took him and another two female medics to the CID (criminal investigation directorate). There she saw 10 - 12 doctors sitting on the floor, blindfolded, handcuffed, and with their heads shaved. They had all been bought for confession in front of Bahraini TV. During the confessions, the police and others interrupted the recording if the doctors said something they don’t want them to say. She said: “We have to say exactly what they want us to say and not the truth.”

As with the destruction of the mosques, the doctor suggests that these absues are also occuring along secular lines.

"Any Shia doctor or medic who has an administrative position is being removed from their position and replaced by a Sunni one."

1430 GMT: A crowd in Damascus protests against the Syrian regime outside of a football stadium last night.

1400 GMT: The unemployment rate in Gaza has risen to 45.2 percent in late 2010, one of the highest unemployment rates in the world. The "real wages" also fell more than a third. 

The unemployment rate was actually worse in late 2009, but it had been improving in the first half of 2010, suggesting that things are again in decline.

The Israeli blockade of Gaza is entering its fifth year. 

1340 GMT: Women march today in protest in Taiz, Yemen.

1329 GMT: Six people have been killed near the Syrian border with Iraq. Protests have also erupted in the eastern town of Deir Ezzor. An eyewitness speaks to the AFP: 

"The armed forces are continuing their operations and the sweep of the villages near Jisr al-Shughur," the flashpoint northeastern town which the army took by force on Sunday, the activist said.

"Six civilians perished in the past few hours in Ariha," east of Jisr al-Shughur, he said, without providing further details.

"Some 10 tanks and 15-20 troop carriers were deployed around the town of Abu Kamal," 500 kilometres east of Damascus near the border with Iraq, the activist added.

1319 GMT: An eyewitness, "Hamza," speaking to BBC World Service from Syria, reports that the Syrian military has attacked Sunni villages in the north but have not attacked villages belonging to the Alawites, the minority sect that President Bashar al-Assad is a member of. The caller also suggests that Iranian special agents are assisting the Syrian military.

The Iranian regime is Shi'a, and has had historic tensions with the Sunnis. 

The New York Times is also running an article this morning warning that there are rising fears of sectarian violence. The worry is that Alawites will join the government crackdown, or that Sunnis will retaliate against the Alawites minority. 

According to the report, fear and anger is growing, but there is not yet enough evidence that the conflict has devolved into sectarian civil war.

1306 GMT: The First Domino - The trial for ousted Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali will begin next week, on June 20. Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia, but the Saudi government has not responded to requests to extradite the former president or his wife.

1302 GMT: Highly confident Libyan rebels fight near the oil refineries in Misurata.

1251 GMT: The Christian Science Monitor has an interview of Darwish Mohammed Fidou, a Syrian soldier who defected after being ordered to shoot civilians. 

“My heart is broken to watch my people die, the Syrian people die, to see such a thing as this,” says Fidou. “It was the same when I had orders to shoot on the people – it broke my heart.”

"The first day they didn't tell us anything, just that there are gangs out there, trying to kill people," says Fidou. "When we went to the streets, we were surprised to find only people with olive branches."

Commanders "were ordering us to shoot at the people, and if we didn't shoot we would be killed," recounts Fidou. Snipers were placed to shoot at possible deserters.

In the melee, Fidou and a number of other soldiers who refused to kill ran from the scene, eventually being taken in and hidden by families who knew they would not shoot.

This account is yet another in a growing anthology of stories reporting the systemic killing of civilians, and soldiers who resist, by the Syrian military.

1234 GMT: James Miller takes the helm.

Pro-Gaddafi forces have retreated from the town of Kikla, about 150km southwest of Tripoli, according to a photographer for Reuters. The Gaddafi loyalists have withdrawn to a position approximately 9 KM away from the twon.

1208 GMT: In the United Arab Emirates, five activists, arrested on charges of criticising the Government, have appeared in a closed court hearing.

Ahmed Mansour Ali Abdullah al Abd al Shehi, Nasser Ahmed Khalfan bin Ghaith, Fahad Salim Mohammed Salim Dalk, Hassan Ali al Khamis and Ahmed Abdul Khaleq were arrested in April on charges including insulting members of the country's ruling families and posing a threat to state security.

Bin Ghaith is a celebrated Emirati financial analyst and lecturer at La Sorbonne in Abu Dhabi.

The next hearing is 18 July.

1200 GMT: Claimed video of a demonstration last night in Aleppo in Syria:

1105 GMT: Robert Fisk writes forcefully about the trial of doctors and medical personnel in Bahrain:

Since I was a witness to their heroic efforts to save lives in February, I can say – let us speak with a frankness that the Bahraini rulers would normally demand – that the charges are a pack of lies.

Doctors I saw, drenched in their patients' blood, desperately trying to staunch the bullet wounds of pro-democracy demonstrators shot in cold blood by Bahraini soldiers and police, are now on trial. I watched armed policemen refusing to allow ambulances to collect the wounded from the roads where they had been cut down.

These are the very same doctors and nurses I stood beside four months ago in the Sulaimaniya emergency room, some of them weeping as they tried to deal with gunshot wounds the like of which they had never seen before.

"How could they do this to these people?" one of them asked me. "We have never dealt with trauma wounds like these before." Next to us lay a man with bullet wounds in the chest and thigh, coughing blood on to the floor.

The surgeons were frightened that they did not have the skills to save these victims of police violence. Now the police have accused the doctors and staff of killing the patients whom the police themselves shot.

1100 GMT: Claimed footage of a protest last night in Sanabis in Bahrain:

0930 GMT: A five-minute discussion this morning on the BBC's flagship radio programme, in the context of yesterday's trial of 20 doctors and their allegations of abuse, with Maysoon Sabkar, a spokeswoman for the Bahraini regime. The entire combative interview is worth a listen, but this is Sabkar's take-away line: "We have zero tolerance policy towards any abuse of human rights."

0555 GMT: In eastern Libya, at least 25 insurgent fighters were killed on Monday on the frontline between Ajdabiya and Brega. Dozens were wounded and transferred to a hospital in Ajdabiya.

The opposition claimed it was advancing towards Zlitan, one of three cities between opposition-held Misurata and the Libyan capital Tripoli. Fighting was also reported on Monday in Zintan, in the western mountains and in nearby Yafran, and at Dafnia near Misurata.

Meanwhile, Germany is the 13th nation to recognise the opposition as the sole representative of the Libyan people. Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle made the announcement on a visit to Benghazi, the opposition centre and Libya's second-largest city. Germany had abstained on the UN resolution for a no-fly zone and opted out of NATO military action.

0520 GMT: A demonstration in Hama in Syria last night, "Our Revolution is Peaceful":

0510 GMT: In Bahrain, 20 doctors (last night, we had reported 11) have gone on trial for taking control of a hospital during anti-regime protests, storing weapons, stealing medicines, and detaining people.

A relative said several defendents wept as they tried to tell the judge of being tortured and forced to sign false confessions.

The trial was adjourned until next week after the defence requested independent medical examinations.

The doctors are among 47 medical staff of the Salmaniya Medical Centre who have been detained since the 14 February uprising began. Ten of them were released last month, but are not allowed to leave the country.

On the academic front, 30 students were reportedly expelled from Bahrain Polytechnic for expressing opinions on Facebook and Twitter.