Bahrain Mirror: The High Criminal Appeals Court upheld life term sentences and citizenship revocation against seven appellants convicted of making explosives and weapons in a Nuwaidrat warehouse and establishing terrorist group. The court also upheld fining the first 3 suspects 300.000 BD.

The authorities claim that the first suspect established a terrorist organization that comprises 2 groups. The second suspect headed the first group that contains the fourth, fifth, sixth and tenth suspects as well as other unknowns. However, the second group is led by the third suspect and contains the seventh, eighth, ninth, eleventh suspects in addition to other unknowns. The authorities allege that the second suspect is the one who recruited the fourth, fifth, sixth, tenth suspects and the other unknowns in order to manufacture arms and explosives and store then in secret warehouses. The group led by the second suspect rented a house in Nuwaidrat to use it as a workshop for manufacturing arms and explosives and establish a secret warehouse to store them. The second suspect assigned the tenth one to receive the manufactures arms and put them in different place after taking photos for these places and sending them to him through the phone, thus, he [the second suspect] can resend the photos to some of the members to use them in their operations. He also tasked him to receive large amounts of money from various places.

The second group, rented vehicles that were used to receive the arms and explosives that were smuggled through the sea to Bahrain. They also supplied the first group which is responsible of manufacturing arms with the needed equipment and substances.

The seventh suspect rented a shop in Salmabad to be a headquarters for their meetings and to be used as a warehouse to store and manufacture explosives. He also received money through the third one in order to make them legitimate and invest them in commercial activities to achieve revenues to be used in funding the group he joins. The seventh suspect used these revenues to buy the tools and equipment used in manufacturing the explosives and the third suspect transferred the money to the ninth one in Iraq.

Human rights organizations challenge the charges raised against political detainees, since they doubt the independence of the judiciary, whose members are assigned by royal decrees, and since it issues sentences based on confessions extracted under duress and evidence presented by secret investigations and anonymous witnesses.

Arabic Version