Nearly 170 charged with forming 'Bahrain Hezbollah'

MANAMA - Bahrain charged 169 people on Tuesday suspected of forming "Bahrain's Hezbollah", a local version of the armed Shiite group, which prosecutors said was trained and backed by Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

The announcement follows scores of arrests and harsh penalties imposed in the Western-allied Gulf state on defendants accused by the authorities of militancy, who activists insist are mostly peaceful opposition members.

Bahrain is a small but strategic island where the US Navy's Fifth Fleet and a new British naval base completed earlier this year are based. It has a Shiite Muslim majority population but is ruled by a Sunni royal family. It has long accused mainly Shiite Iran of stoking militancy, which Tehran denies.

The Gulf Arab kingdom has been dogged by persistent low-level violence since 2011 when it suppressed Shiite-led protests for a constitutional monarchy with an elected prime minister. Shiite demonstrators have clashed frequently with security forces, which have also been targeted by several bomb attacks.

A statement carried by the state news agency BNA said the prosecutor charged 169 defendants, including 111 who had already been arrested. They were accused of forming a terrorist group, planning assassinations and receiving training in handling weapons and manufacturing explosives.

"The Public Prosecution had been informed by the Department of criminal investigation ...that Iran's Revolutionary Guards have ordered some of their members to work on unifying different Bahraini militant groups," the statement said.

"(The groups) would get involved in one terrorist organisation which they called Bahrain's Hezbollah," it said, adding the group was planning to send Bahrainis to Iraq, Lebanon and Iran for military training.

A trial is set for Oct. 3, BNA said.

Bahrain has stepped up a crackdown on critics, shutting down two main political groups, revoking the citizenship of the spiritual leader of the Shiite Muslim community and jailing rights campaigners.

Some analysts have expressed scepticism about previous Bahraini allegations of Iranian and Hezbollah involvement.

Hezbollah is one of the best trained and equipped militant groups in the world, while most of the Bahrain violence has consisted of throwing stones and petrol bombs at police patrols or planting crude pipe bombs.

The authorities have closed most peaceful avenues for protest, banning the main Shiite movement Al-Wefaq, which was the largest bloc in parliament, and throwing dozens of its leaders behind bars.

They and their Gulf Arab allies have also blacklisted Hezbollah as a "terrorist organisation" and banned their citizens from any contact with the group or its members.

The crackdown has drawn some criticism from Western governments but the kingdom's strategic position just across the Gulf from Iran makes it a key ally.