DUBAI: Bahrain’s top military court sentenced six men to
death on Monday after convicting them of charges including plotting to
assassinate the Gulf state’s armed forces chief, state media reported.
It
was the first official mention of any plot against the life of Field
Marshal Sheikh Khalifa bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa, who is a member of the
ruling family, but the Bahrain News Agency gave no further details of
when or where it was alleged to have taken place.
Tiny
but strategic Bahrain has been gripped by unrest for years as its Sunni
royal family has resisted demands from its Shia majority for a
constitutional monarchy with an elected prime minister.
A judicial source said that all six of those sentenced to death on Monday were Shias.
BNA
said that one of them was a serving soldier before his arrest and that
all six were also stripped of their citizenship. The court sentenced
seven other defendants to seven-year jail terms and deprived them too of
their citizenship. Five men were acquitted.
Only 10 of
the defendants are in custody, BNA said. The other eight are on the run —
either inside Bahrain or in Iran or Iraq. Since crushing Shia-led
street protests in 2011, Bahraini authorities have cracked down on all
dissent, banning both religious and secular opposition parties and
jailing hundreds.
