AMMAN — All 13 defendants in the Salt Hospital case on
Sunday entered a not-guilty plea in the first hearing of the high-profile
trial.
The defendants, who are charged with causing the death of
seven people at the hospital earlier this month due to an oxygen outage, were
also denied bail.
The case is being tried by Amman Reconciliation Court after
it was relocated from Salt, 15, due to a security and logistical reason and by
an order of the Cassation Court.
Eleven defendants attended the session in person, while two
attended online because they had tested positive for COVID-19, one of the
defendant’s lawyers told
Jordan News. Many of the men on trial are employees of the hospital, including its
former director, who was sacked after the disaster.
Ibrahim Al-Tahrawi, a lawyer defending one of the
defendants, said the judiciary is accelerating its proceedings due to public
attention, and the fact that His Majesty King Abdullah was on the scene hours
after the news broke that COVID-19 patients were dying because the hospital’s
oxygen reserves ran out.
The investigation, led by a public prosecutor, found that
the employee tasked with handling the oxygen supplies is trained as a nurse who
had no experience in the field. The job requires someone specialized in
medical engineering, according to a copy of the charge list made available to
Jordan News.
The defendants, whose detention was extended for another
week, include top-ranking officials such as the Health Ministry’s assistant
secretary general for technical and health affairs, assistant secretary
general for services and the director of medical engineering at the ministry.
The former minister of health, Nathir Obeidat, resigned his job.
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