Bahrain’s attorney general charged nearly 170 people on Tuesday with forming a Shiite “terrorist organisation” named for Lebanon’s famed militant group Hezbollah. The small but strategic Gulf Arab kingdom has been dogged by persistent low-level violence since 2011 when its Sunni minority rulers bloodily suppressed Shiite-led protests for a constitutional monarchy with an elected prime minister. The authorities have repeatedly accused Shiite Iran and it allies, including Hezbollah, of fomenting the unrest. Iran denies the charge. Attorney general Ahmad al-Hamadi said 169 people, 111 of whom are in custody, will be tried for “forming a terrorist organisation… under the name Bahrain Hezbollah” in collaboration with the Iranian intelligence services. Hamadi did not specify when the trial would open or when the defendants had been arrested. But he said some of them were accused of travelling abroad to receive training in weapons and explosives from Iran and its regional allies. Published in Daily Times, September 26th 2018.