Bahrain revokes citizenship of over 810 dissidents: Rights group

A non-governmental rights group says Bahraini officials have revoked the citizenship of hundreds of people after convicting them of alleged terror charges as the Al Khalifah regime presses ahead with its crackdown on political dissent in the Gulf kingdom.

A non-governmental rights group says Bahraini officials have revoked the citizenship of hundreds of people after convicting them of alleged terror charges as the Al Khalifah regime presses ahead with its crackdown on political dissent in the Gulf kingdom.

Javad Firooz, the chairman of the Salam for Democracy and Human Rights group, said in a post published on his official Twitter page on Wednesday that the Manama regime had stripped 815 people of their citizenship since 2012.

The remarks came on the same day that Bahrain’s Fourth High Criminal Court stripped eleven political dissidents of their citizenship after finding them guilty of “forming a terrorist cell and receiving military training in Iraq.”

On January 31, the same Bahraini court had sentenced an anti-regime activist to death and passed life imprisonment against 23 other political dissidents. The court stripped all the activists of their Bahraini citizenship as well.

Manama has gone to great lengths to clamp down on any sign of dissent. On March 14, 2011, troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were deployed to assist Bahrain in its crackdown.

Scores of people have lost their lives and hundreds of others sustained injuries or got arrested as a result of the Al Khalifah regime’s crackdown.

On March 5, 2017, Bahrain’s parliament 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.