Bahrain upholds death sentences for attack on police

A Bahraini appeals court Tuesday upheld death sentences for three Shiites convicted of killing three policemen in a bombing in the Sunni-ruled Gulf kingdom in 2014, a judicial source said.

The court also upheld life sentences for six other defendants convicted over what was the deadliest attack on security forces since a Shiite-led uprising was crushed in 2011.

A seventh defendant previously sentenced to life in jail did not appeal because he remains at large, the judicial source said.

A policeman from the United Arab Emirates was among the three officers killed in the Shiite village of Diah in March 2014.

He was the first foreign officer killed since Saudi-led troops and police were deployed to Bahrain to support its crackdown on the Arab Spring-inspired protests.

Another Manama court on Tuesday jailed seven Bahrainis for life and sentenced three others to 15 years in prison after convicting them of forming and financing a "terrorist group".

They were also convicted of possessing explosives and training in the use of weapons, General Prosecutor Ahmed al-Hammadi said.

Another was jailed for three years on similar charges, Hammadi said in a statement.

The court ordered the citizenships of all 11 Bahrainis in the second case to be revoked, he added.

Bahrain, which lies across the Gulf from Shiite Iran and is home to the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, has been rocked by unrest since it quelled the Shiite-led protests demanding political reforms in 2011.

On Monday, a court more than doubled the jail sentence against opposition leader Sheikh Ali Salman, in a ruling that his bloc warned risked stoking fresh unrest.

The appeals court increased the Shiite cleric's sentence on charges of inciting violence to nine years from the original four.

Source: AFP