RNA – Bahraini forces arrested Sayyid Majid al-Masha’al, the secretary of Muslim Scholars Council, after raiding his home on Saturday morning.
On January 29, 2014, a Bahraini court decided to dissolve the council, which includes a number of prominent Bahraini Shi’a scholars, and ordered the liquidation of its assets.
Bahrain’s Islamic Scholars Council was founded in 2004 under the leadership of prominent Bahraini Shi’a religious scholar Ayatollah Isa Qasim.
Ayatollah Qasim himself has been stripped of his citizenship and is being tried at a court over trumped-up charges.
Earlier on July 24, Bahraini forces arrested two Shi’a clergymen, identified as Sayyid Yasin al-Mousawi and Shaykh Jasim al-Khayyat, over their participation in a sit-in outside the residence of Ayatollah Qasim to denounce the regime’s decision to revoke his citizenship.
Since February 14, 2011, thousands of anti-regime protesters have held numerous demonstrations in Bahrain on an almost daily basis, calling on the Al Khalifah rulers to relinquish power.
In March that year, troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — themselves repressive Arab regimes — were deployed to the country to assist Manama in its crackdown on protests.
Bahrain has already sentenced Shaykh Ali Salman, another revered opposition cleric, to nine years in prison on charges of seeking regime change and collaborating with foreign powers, which he has denied.
Shaykh Salman was the secretary general of the al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, which was Bahrain’s main opposition bloc before being dissolved by the regime earlier this month.
R111/112/E