Nuwaidrat warehouse case: Ten sentenced to life in jail

Manama : The High Criminal Court yesterday sentenced 10 persons in the Nuwaidrat warehouse case to life in jail,  Chief of Terror Crime Prosecution Advocate General Ahmed Al-Hammadi said. The court also sentenced the 11th accused to ten years in prison. 

The court also fined the first three suspects BD300.000, confiscated the seized items and revoked the citizenship of all the 11 defendants.

“The suspects were found guilty of establishing and joining a terrorist group contrary to the provisions of the law, possessing, acquiring and manufacturing explosives and weapons, as well as possessing firearms, training in using weapons and making explosives, all for terrorist purposes,” the Advocate-General said.

Case documents reveal that the first suspect established a terrorist organisation including two terrorist groups led by the second and third suspects.

The first group was tasked with manufacturing weapons and explosive devices and storing them in a secret warehouse in order to supply other terrorist elements in Bahrain with the needed weapons to be used in terrorist acts in the kingdom.

The group rented a house in Nuwaidrat and used it as a workshop to manufacture weapons and explosive devices. It also established a secret warehouse to store explosives and weapons.

The cell also rented a land lot in Nuweidrat, and used it as a workshop to make weapons. 

The site also included machines to cut and manufacture the tools needed for making weapons and explosives.

Consequently, the terrorist group managed to store large quantities of the weapons and explosives they had manufactured, in addition to those smuggled from Iran, Al-Hammadi said.

The second group, the Advocate General said, was tasked with receiving sea-smuggled weapons and explosives, in addition to providing the necessary devices and tools that were required for manufacturing weapons and explosives and gave them to the first group, led by the second suspect, to assemble them and manufacture them.

Investigations proved that the fourth, seventh and ninth suspects had been trained at the battalions of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Hizbullah in Iraq in using and manufacturing weapons and explosives for the sake of carrying out terrorist attacks, he added.

Seven suspects were arrested, and the rented house in Nuweidrat was raided, he said, noting that the secret store included explosive devices, high-grade explosive materials, military grenades, Kalashnikovs, weapons, large quantities of gunshots for various weapons, a rocket, in addition to large quantities of tools used in making explosives.

A big welding and manufacturing device, another large device, and a set of tools used in the manufacture of explosives were also seized.

The Terror Crime Prosecution levelled the charges against the suspects based on testimonies from the witnesses, the suspects’ confessions, as well as on technical and forensic reports, in addition to those of the General Directorate of Criminal Investigation and Forensic Science.

The Advocate General confirmed that the defendants had been afforded full legal rights throughout the trial, and their court hearings were held in the presence of the lawyers.