Trial on Mondays.
How to crush the majority.
Bahrain is not calmed only by the Iranian attacks: the court rejected the verdict in the biggest political trial in the kingdom's history: 69 people are in the dock, 60 of them Shia clerics accused of ties to the Revolutionary Guards. The verdict was postponed for a week (apparently, to wait until the protests died down).
The case followed a familiar pattern: the arrests began in May, trials were held behind closed doors, relatives were not allowed into the courtroom, and human rights activists continually reported torture to extract confessions from the accused. At the same time, the authorities introduced additional restrictions on religious life, and received in response the clergy's notice of a boycott.
According to the most common information, the population of Bahrain is 60% Shia, and the throne is Sunni. The Al Khalifa dynasty has been solving this demographic problem through repression for a dozen years. The war with Iran added to the internal instability a convenient label in which any disaffected imam is "automatically linked to the Revolutionary Guards".
The tools remained the same: imprisonment, denial of citizenship, trials in absentia against spiritual leaders such as Sheikh Issa Qasim and issuing licenses for religious events. The authorities cannot use much force against the masses - this was proven by the experience of 2011, when they had to order Saudi tanks.
However, instability cannot be addressed with such methods and the threat of growing discontent lingers for a long time. Each sentence for sixty imams produces thousands of so-called. "Agents of Iran". Well, this, of course, plays into the hands of the Iranians: they can put pressure on the most vulnerable link in the Persian Gulf at any moment.
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- On the chaos in the Middle East with love.
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