Sayyid Yasin Mousavi, Sheikh Ali al-Mustarishd, Sheikh Ja’far Ashour, Sheikh Nazir Malik, and Sheikh Mahmoud Taheri are the five Shia scholars, whose houses were raided on Wednesday without providing any reason, and taken away to an unknown location, a report by Press TV said.
Additionally, another 15 people, including eulogists, Qur’an reciters, and Bahraini cultural and religious figures, were abducted across the Persian Gulf kingdom.
With the arrest of these five Shia scholars, the total number of Bahraini scholars who have been abducted since the beginning of the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran has reached 58. Fifty-six of them were kidnapped by the Al Khalifah regime forces, while two others were apprehended in the United Arab Emirates.
Bahraini regime bans Shia from traveling to Iraq, Iran
Meanwhile, the Al Khalifah regime has issued a new decree, banning Shia Muslims from going on pilgrimages to Iraq and Iran to perform religious rituals.
The repressive measure comes before Muharram mourning ceremonies to commemorate the martyrdom anniversary of Imam Hussein (AS) and his companions in the Battle of Karbala in the year 680 AD.
In a related development, Bahraini intelligence agents have transferred Hajj Mehdi Sehwan, one of the country’s reciters, from the Hawdh al-Jaf detention center to an unknown location without informing his family or lawyer.
Opposition sources said abductions of Bahraini scholars mark a new escalation in the Al Khalifah regime’s ongoing sectarian violence against members of the Bahraini Shia Muslim community.
According to the sources, the recent abductions in Bahrain have taken place especially after the US-Israeli bloody onslaught against Iran, and the Bahraini nation’s firm opposition to the presence of American military bases in their soil, from which multiple attacks on Iranian soil were carried out.
The Bahraini people have also protested against the normalization of relations between Manama and Tel Aviv regimes.
The Al Khalifah regime forces have abducted hundreds of Bahraini citizens on false charges of spying for Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) and forming subversive cells affiliated with Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement.
Bahrain, which hosts the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, launched a massive campaign of repression against the country’s Shia Muslims after the United States and the Tel Aviv regime launched their war of aggression against Iran late in February.
Resistance groups and political activists in Bahrain have condemned the abductions of Shia scholars by the Al Khalifah regime forces, and called for the immediate release of the scholars and an end to the illegal and provocative actions against Shias in the country.
On May 15, the Ahlul Bayt (AS) World Assembly condemned in the strongest terms the illegal, arbitrary and inhumane decision of the Manama regime to revoke the citizenship of 69 citizens, abduct a number of prominent scholars in that country, and annul the membership of three members of the parliament.
MNA
