Alwaght- A Bahraini court sentenced on Sunday the spiritual leader of the country's Shiite majority to one year in jail suspended for three years.
The US-backed regime's court convicted Ayatollah Sheikh Isa Qassim of waht it says collecting funds illegally and money laundering ordering the cleric to pay 100,000 Bahraini dinar ($265,266) in fines. The charges emanate from the collection of an Islamic tax called Khums, which in Shiite Islam is collected and spent by a senior cleric in the interests of the needy.
Ayatollah Isa Qassim was stripped of his nationality last June. Thousands of Bahrainis have been protesting outside the house of Ayatollah Qassim in Diraz since June 20, 2016, when the authorities revoked his citizenship. The protests have forced the Manama regime to impose strict siege on the village resided by over 20,000 citizens. The case had ratcheted up tensions in the Western-allied Gulf Arab state where the U.S. Fifth Fleet is based.
The Arabic-language al-Wasat said the court also ordered the confiscation of 3.367 million dinars found in a bank account in the cleric's name.
State news agency BNA, in a report that only referred to Qassim as a cleric, quoted the public prosecutor as saying the funds would be used for charity and humanitarian work once the ruling was deemed final.
"The public prosecutor asserted that the prosecution was currently studying the sentence to determine the possibility of an appeal," BNA said.
The trial is part of a wider crackdown on dissent that included a ban last year on the main Shiite Muslim group Wefaq. Authorities accuse it of fomenting sectarian unrest and having links to a foreign power, an apparent reference to Iran.
Anti-regime protests have been held in Bahrain on an almost daily basis ever since a popular Islamic Awakening uprising began in the country in 2011. The Al Khalifa regime has used an iron fist to silence dissent.
In March 2011, troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — themselves repressive Arab regimes — were deployed to aid Bahrain in its brutal crackdown. Many people have lost their lives and hundreds of others sustained injuries or been arrested and illegally detained while many have seen their citizenship revoked.
