Cell planning attacks busted, says Bahrain

MANAMA, Bahrain

An anti-government protester puts up posters labelling Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah and Bahrain’s King Hamad criminals during a funeral procession of a protester. REUTERS photo

Bahrain says a terrorist cell plotting attacks against the Gulf kingdom has been uncovered by security officials in neighboring Qatar and that the four suspects have links to Iran.

Four members of the cell were detained in Qatar and turned over to Manama, the interior ministry said. A fifth Bahraini was arrested inside the country, ministry spokesman General Tareq al-Hasan said on Nov.12, quoted by state news agency BNA. They had allegedly confessed to planning to attack the interior ministry, the Saudi embassy and a causeway linking the two countries. Hasan said the four arrested in Qatar had been traveling by car from Saudi Arabia. Authorities seized “documents and a computer containing information of a security nature (and) details on certain vital sites,” as well as dollars and Iranian rials. “They then confessed that they had left Bahrain illegally at the instigation of others and gone to Iran,” transiting through Qatar and Syria, to form an “organization to commit armed terrorist acts in Bahrain,” he added. Bahrain’s Sunni monarchy got help from Saudi Arabia in cracking down on a Shiite-led protest movement ignited by the uprisings sweeping the Arab world. Both nations fear that regional rival and Shiite power Iran is aiding the unrest.

Compiled from AP and AFP stories by the Daily News staff.