Bahrain sentences two to death for bombing

Attack on police patrol in the Shiite quarter of Sitra killed two officers and wounded six others

ABahraini court sentenced two people to death yesterday over a deadly bomb attack on a police patrol in 2015, a judicial source said.

Five others were sentenced to life in prison while six defendants received 10-year sentences, including a Shiite cleric, the source said, requesting anonymity as he was not authorised to brief the press. Saudi security forces killed two men who opened fire on police during a raid on a farm in eastern Saudi Arabia used by militants to plot and prepare for attacks, the interior ministry said yesterday.

The Mokhtar Brigades, a little known Shiite militant group based in neighbouring Bahrain, identified the two men as Meqdad Al Nimr and Mohammad Al Nimr. SPA said security forces came under fire while conducting a search in a farm outside the town of Awamiya.

Four other people with a history of involvement in “terrorist and criminal acts” were arrested, the ministry said in a statement.

The cleric, Shaikh Hassan Eisa, a former MP and member of the now-banned Al Wefaq opposition group, was found guilty of using Iranian funds to finance a “terrorist cell”, the source said.

One of those given the death penalty was sentenced in absentia. In total 24 people were tried in connection with the attack. Two were acquitted while 20 were handed prison sentences ranging from six months to life. Eight of the defendants were also stripped of citizenship.

The July 2015 bombing of a police patrol in the Shiite quarter of Sitra, a mixed Sunni-Shiite village south of the capital Manama, killed two officers and wounded six others.

Authorities blamed the bombing on Iranian-backed “terrorist cells” they say are forming throughout the country.

A Bahrain court last week sentenced three people to death over another string of bombings that targeted police patrols in the majority-Shiite village of Kurayat, west of Manama.