Three executed over bomb deaths of Emirati and Bahraini officers
ABU DHABI // Bahrain yesterday executed three men convicted of a bombing that killed an Emirati policeman and two Bahraini officers.
A firing squad ended the lives of Abbas Al Samea, Sami Mushaima and Ali Al Singace a week after the highest court upheld the death sentences for the attack in March 2014.
The bomb killed Lt Tariq Al Shehi from Ras Al Khaimah, who was posted to Bahrain as part of the Saudi-led coalition force deployed in March 2011 to boost security forces in quelling protests. The three bombers were members of the Saraya Al Ashtar extremist militant group, which Bahrain says is supported by Tehran.
Protests in suburbs of Manama broke out on Saturday and again yesterday after the executions. A police officer was shot by militants in Bani Jamra on Saturday. In the 2014 bombing, the attackers targeted security forces near the funeral of an opposition activist who had been killed by police. They planted three improvised explosive devices the night before.
A group, including the three, staged riots to lure police to the road where the bombs were planted, and one of them detonated a bomb from a nearby rooftop. The three men were first sentenced to death in 2015, when seven others received life sentences. A court last October ordered a retrial and the men were handed the same sentences in December. The ruling last Monday was the final appeal and the court of cassation upheld the sentences. The three maintained their innocence and their families told human rights groups that they were tortured into making a confession. Fawaz Al Khalifa, Bahrain’s ambassador to London, however, said that the verdicts were “based on forensics, not confessions as reported on social media”.
The executions were the first death sentences carried out in the kingdom since 2010 and the first for terrorism since 1996.
In the past two years, Bahraini authorities say they have documented an increase in the training of Bahraini militants in Iran and Iraq, as well as the smuggling of sophisticated weapons, particularly improvised explosive devices, into the kingdom.