Dubai: Bahraini authorities arrested suspects who have returned from Syria and are allegedly linked to “terrorist” groups, the interior ministry said Friday.
Bahrain is among the countries that have joined the international coalition against Daesh in Syria and Iraq.
Bahrain’s interior ministry announced that authorities have arrested “a group of people who were recently in Syria and are suspected of contacts with terrorist groups abroad.”
It said that investigations were ongoing, without giving further details in the statement carried by the official BNA news agency.
The conflict in Syria, which began in March 2011, is believed to have drawn in thousands of foreign fighters.
Sunni militants have flocked to Syria to support the rebels, while Shiite fighters - mainly from Lebanon and Iraq - support Al Assad’s forces.
The Syrian conflict “has attracted some Bahraini citizens,” the interior ministry acknowledged in February last year.
But it did not clarify whether it was referring to Sunni Islamists or to Shiites accused of links to Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement which has been fighting alongside Al Assad’s troops.
Bahrain has been deeply divided since a 2011 uprising against its government, which quelled the revolt.
Last month, the kingdom urged the international community to focus its efforts on combating the “evil theocracy” of militant groups such as Daesh.
“I call on you to discard the term ‘war on terror’ and focus on the real threat which is the rise of this evil theocracy,” said Bahrain’s crown prince, Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa.
“We are fighting theocrats... We will be fighting these theocrats for a very long time,” said the prince.
Referring to the militants’ harsh and rigid interpretation of Islam, Prince Salman said: “The 17th century has no place in our modern 21st.”
