Bahrain arrests activist for criticizing its joining US-led maritime coalition

WORLD, Dec. 22 (YPA) – Bahrain security authorities arrested prominent opposition activist Ibrahim Sharif, who criticized the government for joining an international maritime task force set up to deter Yemeni Ansarullah attacks on ships.

According to the New York Times, the lawyer of Ibrahim Sharif, a leftist activist and former leader of Bahrain’s National Democratic Action Society, an opposition party dissolved by the government, said he was arrested on Wednesday.

Sharif’s arrest came as a result of his condemnation to the government of Bahrain’s decision to join the US-led maritime coalition against Yemen.

Ibrahim Sharif wondered why “the unelected government of Bahrain offered itself as a legitimate ‘analyst’ for the US coalition to lift the blockade imposed by Yemen on the ports of the usurping Zionist entity?”

Sharif said, in a post on the “X” platform on Tuesday, December 19, 2023, that “the government of Bahrain offers itself to the American coalition without any regard for the stance of the Bahraini people, who strongly support our besieged Palestinian people who are being slaughtered in Gaza.”

He pointed out that “all Arab and Islamic countries, including those with ports overlooking the Red Sea, refrained from participating in this aggressive alliance.”

When The New York Times asked about Mr. Sharif’s arrest, the Bahraini government said in a statement that “the person is being held” on charges of “supporting a banned terrorist organization,” without clarifying what that organization is.

E.M