Bahraini Regime Tightens Siege on Top Cleric’s House
According to Shafaqna, the Twitter account of al-Diraz Youth Movement has released photos showing Al Khalifa regime forces installing concrete barriers around the senior cleric’s house in the village of al-Diraz, west of Manama.
The regime’s intention is still not clear but Bahraini activists have expressed worries about intensified crackdown by the Manama government on peaceful dissent.
Sheikh Qassim is the spiritual leader of Bahrain’s dissolved opposition bloc, the al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, who was stripped of his citizenship in June last year over accusations that he used his position to serve foreign interests and promote "sectarianism” and "violence.”
He has denied the allegations.
In May, the cleric was convicted in a court of "illegal collection of funds and money laundering” and sentenced to one year in jail suspended for three years. The charges emanate from the collection of an Islamic donation called Khums, a religious practice by a senior cleric in Shia Islam to collect and spend donations in the interests of the needy.
Thousands of anti-regime protesters have held demonstrations in Bahrain on an almost daily basis ever since a popular uprising began in the kingdom in mid-February 2011.
They are demanding that the Al Khalifa dynasty relinquish power and allow a just system representing all Bahrainis to be established.
Manama has gone to great lengths to clamp down on any sign of dissent. Scores of people have lost their lives and hundreds of others sustained injuries or got arrested as a result of Al Khalifa regime’s crackdown on anti-regime activists.
