Court Sentences Shiite to Death, Jails 22 for Forming Terrorist Group

A Bahraini court sentenced a Shiite citizen to death and jailed 22 others for life Thursday for forming a “terrorist group” that killed two people, including a policeman.

This is the second such ruling this week in the tiny Sunni-ruled Gulf kingdom, where members of the Shiite majority population have led an uprising.



The court also revoked the citizenships of the 23 convicts and fined two of them 200,000 dinars ($530,000/480,000 euros), terror crime prosecution chief Ahmed al-Hammadi said in a statement. Judicial sources said that all the defendants were Shiite and that 16 were tried in absentia, without giving further details.

Hammadi said members of the group were convicted of carrying out bombings in two Shiite villages last December.

One of the bombings, in Damistan village, killed a Jordanian policeman working in Bahrain under a security and training exchange agreement. The other one in the nearby village of Karzakan, killing an elderly Bahraini man. Both bombings were carried out by the same “terrorist group” formed by the defendants and “specialised in making explosives to target policemen,” Hammadi said.

Meanwhile, an appeals court upheld the death sentence Thursday against a Shiite convicted of forming and leading a similar “terrorist group” that killed a policeman in a bombing in the Shiite village of Aker last year, Hammadi said.

The court also confirmed stiff jail sentences handed down in April to 11 other members of the group. Seven of them have been sentenced to life, and four others to 10 years, said Hammadi in a statement.

The appeals court also approved revoking the citizenship of all the defendants convicted of attempting to kill three other policemen.
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