Alwaght- Hundreds of people demonstrated on Friday to support top opposition leader in the country, Shiekh Isa Qassim.
The demonstrators expressed their support for the top cleric and protested the state imposed ban on his Friday Prayers rituals that was regarded the greatest ritual of this kind in the country.
The protesters staged a rally in the northwestern village of Diraz, situated about 12 kilometers west of the capital Manama.
On June 20, Bahraini authorities stripped the 79-year-old cleric of his citizenship, less than a week after suspending the al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, the country’s main opposition bloc, and dissolving the Islamic Enlightenment Institution, founded by Qassim, and the opposition al-Risala Islamic Association.
The village is the hometown of the cleric and Bahraini opposition has staged weekly protests in support of the leader and the suppressed prodemocracy movement of the 2011.
Similar anti-regime demonstrations were held in a number of other villages, where the protesters condemned the Al Khalifah regime for its persecution of the Shiite community.
The rally in the village of Sitra, south of Manama, turned violent when security forces fired teargas at protesters, who were demanding the release of Sayed Alawi Hussain Alawi, a Bahraini citizen from Diraz whose fate remains unknown ever since regime forces arrested him at his office on October 24.
The Manama regime has been cracking down on Bahraini people since February 2011, when anti-regime protests erupted in the country.
On March 14, 2011, troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were deployed to Bahrain to assist the Manama government in its crackdown on the protests.
Scores of people have lost their lives and hundreds of others sustained injuries or got arrested in the regime crackdown.
