Bahrain blames Iran for internal issues to justify crackdown, pundit says

Rasa - The Al Khalifah regime of Bahrain is blaming Iran for the internal problems in the Arab country in order to justify its crackdown on dissent. That is an argument made by Foad Izadi, a professor at the University of Tehran.

News ID: 436701

Date: 04 March 2018 - 22:58

RNA - “As you know, we have a history of the Bahraini government engaging in these types of activities and accusations. They are a dictatorship, they are practicing torture, they are putting people in prison, they are denying citizenship to Bahraini citizens and ... they have killed a lot of people and they need to have some sort of excuse for these types of activities,” Izadi told Press TV in an interview on Sunday.

“So what they have done today is nothing new. This is something that the Bahraini government engages in and that is why all major international human rights organizations consider the Bahraini government as one of the worst human rights violators in the world today,” he added.

An official statement on Bahrain’s state news agency, BNA, said on Saturday that the regime forces had detained 116 members of a “terror" cell and thwarted a number of attacks across the country while seizing large quantities of arms and explosives.

The statement claimed that the suspects had links with Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC). Iran denies supporting any bid to overthrow the Bahraini government.

Dozens of Bahraini people have been jailed and stripped of citizenship since a popular uprising began in the tiny Persian Gulf state in mid-February 2011. The kingdom has also deported citizens whose nationalities had been revoked.

On March 5, 2017, Bahrain’s parliament and king approved the trial of civilians at military tribunals in a measure blasted by human rights campaigners as being tantamount to imposition of an undeclared martial law countrywide.

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