Bahrain Crackdown: Regime Files Lawsuit to Dissolve Political Party

Local Editor

The apartheid Al Khalifa regime's government filed a lawsuit Monday to dissolve a political party, the second-such organization it had targeted in the last year as part of an intense crackdown on opposition in the island nation.

The country's so-called Justice, Islamic Affairs and Endowments Ministry accused Waad of "supporting terrorism," according to a statement. The announcement, coming just a day after Bahrain's parliament approved a constitutional amendment allowing military tribunals to try civilians, recalled the clampdown that followed the nation's 2011 Arab Spring protests.

The party could not be immediately reached for comment, but it long had been the target of authorities. One Waad politician previously was arrested and briefly faced charges for speaking to The Associated Press in November during a visit by Britain's Prince Charles and his wife Camilla.

Bahrain had already dissolved the country's largest Shiite opposition group, al-Wefaq, and doubled a prison sentence for its secretary-general, Sheikh Ali Salman.

Regime forces, with help from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, crushed the 2011 uprising by opposition who sought political reform.

Since the beginning of a government crackdown in April, activists had been imprisoned or forced into exile. Bahrain's main Shiite opposition group had been dismantled. Independent news gathering on the island also had grown more difficult.

Bahrain later made reforms following a regime-sponsored investigation into the 2011 demonstrations and the crackdown following it, but several of them had been overturned in recent weeks. Along with allowing military tribunals, the kingdom restored the power of its feared domestic spy service to make some arrests.

In January, Bahrain executed three men charged of a deadly bomb attack on police. Activists said that testimony used against the condemned men was obtained through torture.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team