Bahrain jails five men for smuggling explosives

Manama : Five suspects implicated in connection with smuggling bomb-making equipment and explosives into Bahrain have been slapped with jail sentences each. The sentences were issued yesterday by the High Criminal Court. Four defendants attended the hearing, while the fifth co-defendant is still at large.  

The Bahraini defendants, including a teenager, were aboard the bus, which was intercepted at the King Fahd Causeway on March 15, 2015, carrying 140 detonators, 41 electrical circuits, a remote-controlled device and mobile phones used to detonate explosives.  

The defendants include the bus driver, who earlier confessed before the Terror Crime Prosecution that he knew that the devices were on board as he drove passengers to Bahrain across the King Fahd Causeway. 

The explosives were being transported from Iraq, intended to be used in terrorist attacks, according to prosecutors. 

The teenager was allegedly being used as a mule to smuggle the equipment to Bahrain via Saudi Arabia.  The defendants were sent to trial by the Terror Crime Prosecution on grounds of smuggling and possessing explosive materials and receiving weapons training.  

The Terror Crime Prosecution stated earlier in a statement that the fifth defendant was in Iraq and the bus driver agreed to keep the materials with the teenager to avoid suspicion. The fifth defendant is already implicated in several cases. He used Iraq as a hub to export bombs and explosive detonators to Bahrain.

According to court files, the other defendants had successfully smuggled bombs into Bahrain in the past. Detectives found the equipment used to construct bombs as well as mobile phones and SIM cards from the shop run by the third defendant.