Bahrain terror plot suspects 'trained in Syria'

INTERNATIONAL PLOT: Bahrain said the suspects planned attacks in Manama on National Day. (Getty Images

Men arrested this month on suspicion of plotting terrorist attacks in Bahrain learned bomb-making in Syria last summer from two Bahrainis living in Britain, the interior minister said on Saturday.

"The suspects went to Syria with a group of [Shi'ite] pilgrims during the summer, pretending to want to visit holy sites," Sheikh Rashed bin Abdullah Al-Khalifa said at a news conference.

"On their arrival they met a Bahraini living in London who prepared an intensive training programme on bomb making, how to use the bombs and how to booby-trap cars," Sheikh Rashed said.

The minister said the group was taken under the wing of two Bahrainis. The people who had come from Bahrain trained in Syria in July and August, he said without specifying how many people were in the group.

Bahrain's Gulf Daily News, however, reported on Sunday that 14 individuals have been arrested in cinnection with the planned attacked. 

The instructors who had come from Britain "were planning to bring large quantities of weapons into Bahrain to use in acts of violence and terror," Sheikh Rashed said.

He said he has raised the matter with the Syrian authorities and the two countries will try to prevent Bahrainis who go to Syria being "mixed up in illegal activities."

The minister said he has alerted British authorities to "the activities of Bahrainis living in Britain who are threatening security in Bahrain."

On Dec. 17, Bahrain's state security authority said it had detained members of a group planning a terrorist attack to coincide with Bahrain's national day celebrations.

In 2003, Bahraini security arrested six young men and accused them of planning bombings and of ties with Al-Qaeda. However, a Bahraini court later acquitted them.

In July, 11 Shi'ite opposition activists were sentenced to jail terms of between one and seven years for clashes last December in the Sunni-ruled state between police and protesters.

The Shi'ite majority in Bahrain, where the US Fifth Fleet is based, has been campaigning for compensation for alleged human rights violations in the 1980s and 1990s.

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