The suspects were arrested on Sunday, a statement from Bahrain’s interior ministry has confirmed.
During security operations in several cities across the small Gulf island kingdom, investigations revealed that the extremist group worked under direct supervision in terms of financing, planning and implementation of attacks by two known extremists; Mortadha Majeed al-Sindi and Qassim Abdullah Ali.
Several of those identified and arrested were proven to have received military training in camps under the supervision of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
Others arrested on Sunday were also responsible for a bomb attack that struck a bus carrying Bahrain police on February 26 that left four officers injured.
It is notable that earlier this month Bahrain uncovered what it called a terrorist cell and arrested 25 individuals so far with 16 others charged in absentia, Al Arabiya News Channel has reported.
The cell has been said to have carried out at least six operations inside the tiny island Gulf kingdom.
“The terrorist cell planned to assassinate security forces in Bahrain with coordination from Iran,” sources told Al Arabiya News Channel.
Several weapons, home-made explosive devices and munitions were also found when a security operation to arrest individuals belonging to cell were carried out.
A source told Al Arabiya English that one of the members arrested confessed that they have been receiving instructions from a leader in Germany who has been organizing their travel in and out of the country from Iran and Iraq.
Some of the operations that were planned out and executed in Bahrain by this terrorist cell involved the recent Jaw Prison break and the failed attempt by some prisoners to escape Bahrain to Iran in recent weeks,” Bahraini writer Sawsan Al Shaer told Al Arabiya.
“Some of the confessions that were extracted from members of the cells said that some of the group’s militants received training from grounds in Iraq. This poses questions to the Iraqi government on what needs to be done to ensure that these terrorist elements in Iraq do not plan further operations in Bahrain,” Al Shaer added.
Iran regime’s role
It is noteworthy that Indeed, the growing network of bomb making facilities and weapons stores is one of the most disturbing aspects of Iran’s destabilization campaign in Bahrain. A number of other discoveries have been made along those lines in the past year and a half:
• On June 6, 2015, Bahraini authorities exposed a bomb making workshop under a new home, into which an industrial press had been mounted before the house was built overhead. The shop’s main function was to manufacture six-, eight-, and twelve-inch EFP liners, the shaped dishes that give the devices their armor-piercing effect. At the time of its discovery, it was producing very accurate EFPs with passive infrared sensors (used to initiate a device as vehicles pass) and radio-controlled arming switches (to turn on the sensors). Local militants had also attempted to send a number of these advanced munitions into Saudi Arabia by road that May.
• On July 15, 2015, authorities captured a speedboat that had received 43.8 tons of C4 explosives, forty-nine detonators, and ball-bearings for Claymore-type devices from a ship just inside Bahrain’s territorial waters. Eight AK-47 assault rifles and thirty-two magazines were also on the boat; two individuals were arrested.
• On September 27, 2015, security forces discovered another bombmaking facility in Nuwaidrat that contained 1.4 tons of C4, RDX, and TNT explosives plus significant quantities of precursors for developing homemade ammonium nitrate-based explosives. Also discovered onsite were an EFP-making industrial press, EFP components, six large pipe bombs, Claymore-type warheads, a bomb disguised as a fire extinguisher, a number of improvised mortars and rocket launchers, four AK-47s, four pistols, and twenty hand grenades.
• In December 2016, a group of men armed with AK-47s fled security forces after being dropped off in Bahrain by boat. Their escape car was traced to an address where a new workshop was discovered. The site contained detonators and other bombmaking equipment, some of which bore fingerprints of an individual wanted for previous bombing and arson attacks. Two individuals linked to the house had just traveled to Iran for a ten-day visit the previous month. A boat registered to the address carried a GPS device that showed numerous trips into Iranian waters stretching back to February 2015.
Source: / ncr-iran /