Bahrain arrests 25 more Shia citizens as marches for jailed scholars spread

TEHRAN — Protests spread across Bahrain over the weekend as demonstrators demanded the release of detained Shia scholars and clerics, and security forces responded by arresting at least 25 people in raids and summonses.

Bahrain’s Shia leader urges peaceful defense of tortured defendants facing mass trial

TEHRAN — Sheikh Isa Qassim, the senior Shia cleric whom Bahrain’s rulers stripped of his citizenship in 2016, urged the public on Friday to stand peacefully behind 60 clerics awaiting a court verdict on November 8, and warned the monarchy that a case built on “fabricated and defamatory accusations” could carry grave consequences.

By staff writer

Bahrainis rally against detention of religious leaders

TEHRAN — Crowds filled the streets of Sitra Island on Friday night, marching in direct defiance of the Al Khalifa regime’s expanding campaign against Bahrain’s Shia majority.

By Garsha Vazirian

The war on Muharram epitomizes the Bahraini monarchy’s terminal terror

TEHRAN — The sulfurous sting of tear gas has become the Al Khalifa regime’s preferred incense for the month of Muharram. In the early hours of June 17, the village of Abu Saiba, a quiet Shia enclave on the outskirts of Manama, was turned into a battlefield.

By Garsha Vazirian

Why Bahrain’s monarchy treats its people as an enemy

TEHRAN — There is an unspoken rule driving the security apparatus inside Manama: a population you deeply distrust can never be governed, only contained. The Al Khalifa monarchy, an absolute Sunni ruling elite dominating a native Shia majority, acts less like a sovereign government and more like an anxious security regime.