MANAMA: A Bahraini court has sentenced 12 men to life in prison for spying, receiving training from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and processing weapons and explosives, a defence lawyer and rights activist said yesterday.
Attorney Fatima Al Adraj said the court convicted the men on Sunday, and sentenced two others to 15 years.
Some of the men were tried in absentia, said activist Mohammed Al Maskati. It was not clear how many of them were actually jailed.
Separately, the public prosecution charged eight men with being part of a terrorist group, state news agency BNA reported. The charges follow the killing of three policemen by a bomb on March 3 during a protest in a Shia village.
The charges include setting up a group that makes and uses explosives “targeting police members with the intention of killing them for the purpose of sowing chaos and sedition, and weakening state institutions to make them fail,” public prosecutor Hussein Albouali was quoted as saying.
Yesterday, hundreds of Bahrainis clashed with police after the funeral of two men who were killed in a car explosion over the weekend, a witness said.
As the funeral ended in Al Maqshaa’ village, outside of the capital Manama, some youths threw stones and petrol bombs at the police, who fired teargas. No one was wounded and the gathering dispersed shortly after that, the witness said.
Libyan charter panel elects
liberal as head
TRIPOLI: Ali Tarhuni, a liberal politician and former rebel minister, was elected to head Libya’s constituent assembly, a spokesman for the body charged with drawing up a new constitution said yesterday.
Tarhuni, an exiled opponent of dictator Muammar Gaddafi, returned to Libya to take part in the 2011 revolt which toppled his regime.
Agencies
