| | | Date: Jun 22, 2018 | | Source: The Daily Star |  |  |  |
| | Bahrain spying case opposition figures acquitted | Reuters
DUBAI: A Bahraini court Thursday acquitted three senior leaders of the country’s main opposition group of spying for Qatar, a rare win for opposition figures who say they have been targeted by prosecutors for their political views. In November, the public prosecutor accused Sheikh Ali Salman, opposition al-Wefaq group secretary-general, and Sheikh Hassan Sultan, a former member of the Bahraini Parliament for al-Wefaq, of conspiring with Qatari officials to carry out “hostile acts” in the kingdom.
The High Criminal Court acquitted them along with a third senior al-Wefaq member, Ali Alaswad, said Public Prosecutor Osama al-Oufi, cited by the state BNA news agency.
Human rights group Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy hailed the verdict as “the end of a long, flawed trial.”
BIRD said Sultan and Alaswad were tried in absentia. Salman is already serving a four-year prison sentence for inciting hatred and insulting the Interior Ministry, after he was arrested in 2015.
“The public prosecutor used secret witnesses and a video from a Bahraini television channel which experts described as edited and not complete,” Alaswad told Reuters.
Alaswad resigned in response to the crackdown against the kingdom’s opposition.
He has lived in London since 2011. |
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