MANAMA: A court jailed nine Bahrainis for life yesterday for forming a militant group, manufacturing explosives and plotting attacks aimed at destabilising the kingdom, state news agency BNA reported.
The trial was the latest in a series involving alleged anti-government activists in the Gulf Arab state, still beset by political tensions more than two years after security forces quelled pro-democracy protests led by Shias. BNA said the convicted men had turned a Manama warehouse into a bomb factory, where they had prepared explosives to attack security forces, civilians and private and public property “with the aim of undermining the stability of the country and harming its economic foundations”.
Pro-democracy protests erupted in 2011, led by majority Shias demanding an end to the Sunni monarchy’s political domination of Bahrain.
US blacklists Egypt terror commander
WASHINGTON: The United States yesterday blacklisted as a terrorist an Egyptian Islamist military commander with links to Al Qaeda, accusing him of setting up training camps in Egypt and Libya.
The State Department also designated as global terrorists the group founded by Muhammad Jamal, who had learned bomb-making techniques when he trained with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Jamal had returned from Afghanistan to Egypt in the 1990s and became the military head of Islamic Jihad, which was then led by Ayman Al Zawahiri, now the global head of Al Qaeda.
Jamal was arrested several times by Egyptian authorities, but on his release in 2011 he founded the Muhammad Jamal Network “and established several terrorist training camps in Egypt and Libya,” the State Department said.
Over 500,000 attend Israeli rabbi funeral
JERUSALEM: More than 500,000 people attended the funeral in Jerusalem of influential Israeli Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who died yesterday, a police spokeswoman said. Luba Samri added that the number was increasing, as mourners took to the streets hours after Yosef’s death in a Jerusalem hospital.
The mostly ultra-Orthodox Jews wearing traditional black clothing and with men separated from women gathered outside the seminary Yosef had studied at before heading to the conservative Sanhedria district for the event.
Police blocked off some of the Holy City’s roads and stepped up security for the funeral, with thousands of additional policemen deploying, Samri said.
Yosef, who wielded enormous influence among Israeli Jews of Middle Eastern and North African ancestry but courted controversy with his outspoken views, had been in and out of hospital for months and undergone heart surgery.Agencies
