A Bahraini Arabic-language daily newspaper affiliated to the ruling Al Khalifah dynasty has claimed that the three pro-democracy campaigners recently shot dead by regime forces in the Persian Gulf waters were killed in Eastern Ghouta near the Syrian capital city of Damascus.
Al-Watan (The Homeland) newspaper, in a report published on Saturday, alleged that Sayed Kassim Khalil, Sayed Mahmoud Adel and Maytham Salman had lost their lives in the militant-held enclave while fighting alongside pro-Syrian government troops.
The daily’s awkward attempt to distort facts comes despite the fact that the trio had been targeted and killed last month as they were trying to flee Bahrain by sea.
Iranian naval forces later pulled out the bodies of the three slain Bahraini anti-regime activists.
Bahraini opposition sources maintain that the boat was carrying four people when it was targeted by the Bahraini coast guard. No information about the fate of Hassan Ali Ibrahim has been exposed.
Bahraini authorities have reportedly summoned the families of the four political dissidents for interrogation.
Dozens of supporters of the ruling Bahraini regime are fighting alongside foreign-sponsored Takfiri terrorist groups inside Syria.
On July 30, 2015, social media accounts, sympathetic to Takfiri militant outfits, announced the death of Bahraini citizen Fawaz al-Najras in Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib.
Najras had close ties to then al-Nusra Front Takfiri terrorist group, which is now known as the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.
Syrian government forces, supported by allied fighters from popular defense groups, also killed a high-ranking Daesh militant commander, identified as Abu al-Mosana al-Bahraini, during heavy clashes in the southern part of Aleppo.
Abdul Aziz al-Othman, 17, and Abdul Rahman al-Othman, 21, from the Bahraini town of Arad, were killed in Syria in October 2013 as they were fighting within al-Nusra Front ranks.
Earlier, Bahraini national Ibrahim Mohyeddin Khan had been killed in the northern Syria town Ariha while fighting for al-Nusra Front.
Bahrain is one of the financial sponsors of Takfiri terrorist groups operating inside Syria. The tiny Persian Gulf kingdom openly collects aids for the terror outfits, and militant supports have regular conventions there.
Thousands of anti-regime protesters have held demonstrations in Bahrain on an almost daily basis ever since a popular uprising began in the country in mid-February 2011.
They are demanding that the Al Khalifah regime relinquish power and allow a just system representing all Bahrainis to be established.
Manama has gone to great lengths to clamp down on any sign of dissent. On March 14, 2011, troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were deployed to assist Bahrain in its crackdown.
Scores of people have lost their lives and hundreds of others sustained injuries or got arrested as a result of the Al Khalifah regime’s crackdown.
On March 5, 2017, Bahrain’s parliament approved the trial of civilians at military tribunals in a measure blasted by human rights campaigners as being tantamount to imposition of an undeclared martial law countrywide.
Bahraini monarch King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifah ratified the constitutional amendment on April 3 last year.
