Abu Dhabi: Eighteen Bahraini men have been jailed for between five years and life for being part of a terrorist cell that planned to bomb key landmarks in the Kingdom, including the CID headquarters in Adliya, the Bahraini High Court has ruled.
The men aimed to avenge the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a US military strike in Baghdad in January 2020.
The defendants were also found guilty of forming a cell supported by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
The court sentenced eight defendants to life imprisonment, two others got 15 years imprisonment, another two were handed 10 years in jail, while five men were jailed for 5 years, and one got 7 years. Nine defendants were present and another nine are on the run outside the country.
The men were also convicted of receiving militia training abroad and possessing explosives since 2017.
The Public Prosecution began investigating the case, after arresting a number of defendants in the second half of January last year, which revealed that some of the main defendants fled from Bahrain, settled in Iran and received financial and logistical support from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
The prosecution said that the defendants “set up a group to commit terrorist operations inside the Kingdom, and recruited the rest of the defendants, who joined that group later, and started committing crimes, with the aim of spreading terror and chaos among people and weakening the foundations of the state.
“They planned bombings in the Kingdom, targeting security officials, and some of them have received training in the use of firearms and explosives to be used in the implementation of their plots,” a prosecutor said.
The prosecutor added that the investigations have proven “the validity of the findings of the investigations, and that the group collected funds, possessed explosives and planted explosive devices in public places with the intention of targeting security men.
It has also been proven through investigations that after the killing of General Qassem Soleimani, one of the accused asked the leaders of the terrorist group to avenge his killing and name their group (Martyr Qassem Soleimani’s company), and that name was approved.
Based on the conclusive evidence against the defendants, the prosecution ordered them brought to trial, nine of whom were imprisoned and nine others were on the run outside the country.
