The Shariah Medical Committee will announce its ruling next week in the case of dentist Tariq Al-Juhani after reviewing the bill from a US medical specialist hired by Al-Juhani's family to investigate the cause of death. Tuesday's hearing, the sixth in the case, saw the verdict delayed after the defendants' lawyers expressed a willingness to pay the bill, which Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al-Ojairi, head of the committee, said would amount to around SR168,000. “The bill covers travel costs, expenses during his stay, and medical investigation costs,” Al-Ojairi said. “The committee's ruling on Al-Juhani's death is ready, but the bill needs to be looked at first, so the victim's family brought it in order for fines against the hospital to be arranged.” Al-Ojairi added that the final pronouncement in the case would see prison sentences as well as fines and that both the private hospital in question and the doctors involved would be penalized. “The sentence will be announced at the next hearing,” he said, which is expected to take place within a week. Tuesday's hearing, which was held in the absence of the anesthetist and the hospital medical team that performed the procedure on Al-Juhani last December, also revealed new evidence incriminating the defendants. According to Thamir Al-Juhani, a brother of the deceased, a doctor who had previously appeared before the committee as an intensive care consultant was, in fact, an internist doctor. “And the person who claimed at the beginning of the investigation to be an anesthetist technician turned out to be a nurse,” he said. During the previous hearing at the end of April, the Shariah Medical Committee said that three anesthetists, a surgeon, and the General and Medical directors of the hospital were at fault for Al-Juhani's death. The hearing also established that the principal cause of death was an excessive dose of neuromuscular blocking anesthetic. Tariq Al-Juhani died on Dec. 17 after a 21-day coma following a weight
