{"id":16348,"date":"2018-09-26T03:23:43","date_gmt":"2018-09-26T03:23:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=16348"},"modified":"2018-09-26T03:23:43","modified_gmt":"2018-09-26T03:23:43","slug":"bahrain-charges-169-for-forming-another-hezbollah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=16348","title":{"rendered":"Bahrain charges 169 for forming another ‘Hezbollah’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Bahrain<\/a>\u00a0has detained and accused 169 people of forming “Bahrain’s Hezbollah”, a local version of the armed Shia<\/a> group based in Lebanon<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The announcement follows scores of arrests and harsh penalties<\/a> imposed in the Western-allied Gulf state on defendants accused of armed rebellion, while activists say they are peaceful opposition members.<\/p>\n

The small but strategic Arab kingdom has been dogged by persistent low-level violence since 2011<\/a> when its Sunni<\/a>-minority rulers violently suppressed Shia activist-led protests for a constitutional monarchy with an elected prime minister.<\/p>\n

Authorities have repeatedly accused Iran and its allies, including Hezbollah, of fomenting the unrest, a charge denied by Tehran.<\/p>\n

Attorney General Ahmad al-Hamadi said 169 people, 111 of whom are in custody, will be tried for “forming a terrorist organisation … under the name Bahrain Hezbollah”, in collaboration with Iranian intelligence services.<\/p>\n

Hamadi did not specify when the trial would open or when the defendants were arrested. It was also not clear if they had legal counsel.<\/p>\n

He said some of the detainees were accused of travelling abroad to receive training in weapons and explosives from Iran and its regional allies.<\/p>\n

Analysts have expressed scepticism about previous Bahraini allegations of Iranian and Hezbollah involvement.<\/p>\n

Hezbollah<\/a> is one of the best-trained and equipped armed groups in the world, while most of the Bahrain violence has consisted of stone-throwing and petrol bombs directed at police patrols, or planting crude pipe bombs.<\/p>\n

Crackdown on dissent<\/h2>\n

The authorities have closed most peaceful avenues for protest, banning the main Shia movement Al-Wefaq, which was the largest bloc in parliament, and throwing dozens of its leaders behind bars. <\/p>\n

They and their Gulf Arab allies have also blacklisted Hezbollah as a “terrorist organisation” and banned their citizens from any contact with the group or its members.<\/p>\n

The crackdown has drawn periodic criticism from Western governments, but the kingdom’s strategic position just across the Gulf from Iran makes it a key ally.<\/p>\n

The islands are home to the US Fifth Fleet and house a new British naval base completed earlier this year.<\/p>\n

The United Nations and rights groups have accused Bahrain’s government of crushing dissent and violently cracking down on protests<\/a> and members of a peaceful political opposition.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bahrain\u00a0has detained and accused 169 people of forming “Bahrain’s Hezbollah”, a local version of the armed Shia group based in Lebanon.\u00a0 The announcement follows scores of arrests and harsh penalties imposed in the Western-allied Gulf state on defendants accused of armed rebellion, while activists say they are peaceful opposition members. The small but strategic Arab…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":16349,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}