Bahrain Crackdown: Court Hands Down Jail Terms to 17 Citizens in Mass Trial
Local Editor
Amid the heavy crackdown of the regime against opposition and political dissent, a Bahraini court handed down heavy jail sentences to seventeen people in a mass trial.
Aged between 28 and 59, the convicts were accused of forming the so-called al-Basta group and planning to carry out "a series of bombings" in the country, the Bahraini LuaLua TV reported.
Eight defendants were sentenced to life in prison, and nine given jail terms of between 10 and 15 years, all on alleged charges of having "links" to Iran, plotting to overthrow the Bahraini regime and disturbing public order.
Fourteen of them were also stripped of their nationalities.
Among those served with life terms, two brothers, Mohammad and Ali Fakhrawi, were accused of being the leaders of the group.
Other defendants sentenced to life in prison included blogger Ali al-Meraj and the son of noted opposition figure, Hussein Abdul Wahab.
A journalist, Mahmoud al-Jazeeri, was also among those sentenced to 15 years in prison, while Shia cleric, Sheikh Issa al-Qafas, received a 10-year prison term.
Critics of the Bahraini regime say the defendants in the mass trial, all Shia Muslims, were victims of torture and denied the right to legal representation during the investigation period.
Manama has faced popular outrage over its discriminatory policies against the country's Shia majority since 2011, when a popular uprising began there. The regime has come down hard on the peaceful protests, in a crackdown campaign which has led to dozens of deaths.
In an exceptionally controversial move in April, Bahrain's Parliament authorized military courts to try civilians charged with "terrorism" -- a vaguely defined legal term in the kingdom.
Separately, the Sixth High Criminal Appeals Court upheld on Monday three-year prison sentences issued against five defendants earlier in the year.
The sentences had been issued for alleged charges of "planting a fake bomb in a private garage in the northern village of Buri on February 15, 2016."
Three of the convicts are relatives of Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, a human rights defender and director of advocacy at the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy [BIRD] NGO, who lives in exile in the UK.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team
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