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| Arabia |
| Bahraini raids arrest over 100 members of alleged Iranian-backed network |
| 2018-03-13 |
| [FDD's LongWarJournal] The Bahrain Interior Ministry reported on March 3 that its security forces arrested 116 members of a militant cell operating in the Gulf kingdom. The weekend raids are the latest in a series of major arrests of reportedly Iranian-backed militants in Bahrain over the past few years. According to the Bahrain Interior Ministry, the cell was linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Additionally, it said that the members belonged to different militias in the island but the IRGC “unified them in a single framework.” Moreover, the ministry accused the IRGC, Lebanese Hezbollah, and Asaib Ahl al Haq in Iraq of training the militants in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon. On state TV, suspected militants repeated the same claim and alleged they were trained by the aforementioned three groups, as well as Kata’ib Hezbollah, before returning to Bahrain. These claims cannot be independently verified by FDD’s Long War Journal, however, this is a longstanding accusation of Bahrain. This also fits with a larger trend of Iranian support of various groups across the Middle East, including in Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine, and Yemen. |
| Posted by:3dc |