Bahrain’s Supreme Criminal Court has sentenced eight people to life in prison for their alleged part in the killing of a policeman in a bomb blast in November, the prosecutor’s office on Sunday.
The al-Khalifa regime has struggled with unrest since mass pro-democracy protests, led by the majority Shi’ite population but also included some Sunnis, erupted in 2011. Moe than 120 innocent people have been killed by regime since began of uprising.
The protests were put down by the authorities but since then more Shi’ites have carried out low-level protest against security forces on an almost daily basis.
The prosecutor’s office claimed the eight men planted a homemade bomb close to where police usually erected a checkpoint during protests, before setting tyres on fire and blocking the road to lure police to the site.
One policeman was killed and four others were injured in the resulting blast, the prosecutor said.
Bahrain’s main opposition group, al-Wefaq, and other international organizations, said that detainees were regularly subjected to torture and forced to make confessions and that the courts were ignoring human rights violations committed by the security forces.
Shi’ites in the kingdom have long complained that they are underrepresented in elections and that they face discrimination in getting government jobs.
The ministry is still looking for two more suspects in relation to the explosion, the ministry said on its website. َ
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