Beirut Investigative Judge George Rizk Wednesday granted bail to a doctor in custody on charges of misdiagnosing an infant whose limbs later had to be amputated, a judicial source told The Daily Star.
Dr. Issam Maalouf, who was arrested during an interrogation last week, has been granted a bail of LL100 million ($66,335), the judicial source said.
Rizk also ordered the formation of a medical committee tasked with drafting a report on the condition of Maalouf's patient, Ella Tannous, who is less than one year old.
The presiding judge referred Maalouf's case to the Public Prosecutor's Office to review the decision. The public prosecutor will have 24 hours to appeal the verdict, the source said.
If the decision is rejected, or if Maalouf cannot pay the bail, he will remain in jail. He will still be tried in court over the charges.
In his testimony before the court, Maalouf insisted that he had not misdiagnosed Tannous, his defense lawyer Sakhr Hashem said after the hearing.
The physician's testimony comes days after Lebanon’s state prosecutor claimed that Maalouf had confessed to misdiagnosing the baby during preliminary interrogation.
The Order of Physicians, which declared a strike Friday over the arrest, will now call off the strike that affected 12,000 physicians, head of the union Antoine Boustani told The Daily Star.
