By Frederik Richter

Reuters

MANAMA: Thousands of Bahraini Shiites gathered before a revered preacher Friday denounced death sentences given to protesters involved in pro-democracy unrest suppressed last month in the U.S.-allied Gulf kingdom.
The verdict, handed down by a military court a day earlier to four men accused of killing two policemen in violent protests last month, could intensify sectarian tension in the Sunni Muslim-led state.

“It’s not true that they killed them,” said a man who identified himself only as Moussa, after praying at the mosque of Sheikh Issa Qassim, as a police helicopter circled overhead. “The government made it up just like a movie.”
He was referring to video footage that Bahraini authorities have circulated showing the two policemen smashed by a vehicle that sped through a crowd of protesters, some of whom appeared to then trample and kick the fallen men.
Police kept a tight grip on roads leading to the village where the mosque is located, turning back many vehicles.
The rulings were only the third time in over 30 years the death penalty had been given against a Bahraini citizen.
“The sentence was appropriate,” said Mohammad al-Ammadi, a Sunni lawmaker, citing what he saw as the extreme brutality of the killings.
The recent turmoil began with Shiite-led political protests in February.

Human rights groups say hundreds of people have been sacked from public sector jobs and that Bahraini forces have seized patients and health workers from hospitals that were a site of protests.
The latter assertion figured in a rare, mild U.S. rebuke of Bahrain on the heels of the court ruling, which included life sentences for three other men. “Security measures will not resolve the challenges faced by Bahrain,” State Department spokeswoman Heide Bronke-Fulton said in an emailed statement.
“We are also extremely troubled by reports of ongoing human rights abuses and violations of medical neutrality in Bahrain.”
Germany’s Foreign Ministry urged Bahrain to rescind the death sentences, which it called “draconian punishment.”