Bahrain’s prosecution service said Monday it has charged 11 suspects with forming a ‘terrorist’ group that included members trained by the Iranian regime’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and its proxy group Hezbollah in Iraq.
The group has been charged with ‘establishing and joining a terrorist group; possessing explosives, weapons and firearms; and receiving training for terrorist purposes’, Advocate General Ahmed al-Hamadi said.
According to him, four of the suspects ‘attended military training camps operated by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the Iraqi branch of Hezbollah’.
He said in a statement that the charges were filed after a probe into a weapons cache found in a warehouse in a village in Bahrain.
‘In excess of 1.5 tonnes of high-grade explosives, including C4-RDX, TNT and other powerful chemical explosives were discovered in the counter-terrorism operation in September last year,’ he said.
Bahrain has repeatedly accused the Iranian regime of meddling in its internal affairs.
Bahrain said on January 6 that it had caught an Iranian-linked cell plotting attacks on its territory.
“A secret terrorist plot aided by the so-called Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the Hezbollah terrorist organization was foiled,” Bahrain News Agency reported.
“It targeted the security of the kingdom of Bahrain by (plotting to) carry out a series of dangerous bombings,” it added.
The report said a main suspect, Ali Ahmed Fakhrawi, had traveled to Lebanon and personally met the head of Hezbollah, who gave him $20,000 to aid the cell.
Fakhrawi and his twin brother were linked to the militant activities of eight other suspects named by BNA, some of whom were arrested as early as 2013 and two of whom were designated as fugitives, one in Iran.
In November 2015, Bahrain said it had arrested 47 members of a group believed to have links to “terrorist elements in Iran” who it said were planning to carry out attacks in the coming days.
Bahrain recalled its ambassador to Iran in October 2015 after it said security forces discovered a bomb-making factory and arrested a number of suspects linked to the Revolutionary Guard.