Hardline Shiite opposition leader Hassan Mushaimaa was due to fly home to Bahrain yesterday after Lebanese authorities returned his passport, a friend of his said.
“His passport has been given back to him and he’s bought a ticket. He will land in Bahrain at 3pm [11am GMT],” Abbas al-Amran said.
Mushaimaa, the London-based leader of the Shiite Haq movement, said on his Facebook page on Monday he would try to return to the Gulf Arab country after a week of unprecedented protests by majority Shiite Muslims against the US-backed Sunni monarchy.
He said he wanted to see if the island nation’s leadership was serious about dialogue or not.
However, he was stopped during a stopover in Beirut by Lebanese authorities, who said his name was on an international arrest warrant, and his passport was seized.
On Thursday Bahrain’s foreign minister said Mushaimaa, who was among 25 people charged over an alleged coup plot and who was being tried in absentia, had been pardoned and would return home to join a national dialogue.
Security forces killed seven people and wounded hundreds while trying to disperse protests last week before Bahrain, under pressure from its Western allies, pulled back its army and police and allowed peaceful demonstrations in Pearl Square.
Bahrain’s protesters want a constitutional monarchy instead of the existing system where citizens vote for a mostly toothless parliament and policy remains the preserve of a ruling elite centred on the Sunni al-Khalifa dynasty.
Mushaimaa’s Haq party is more radical than the Shiite Wefaq party, from which it split in 2006 when Wefaq contested a parliamentary election. Haq’s leaders have often been arrested in recent years, only to receive royal pardons.
Meanwhile, the country’s Cabinet has been reshuffled in a further attempt to appease the Shiite opposition sources said yesterday.
The ministers of housing, health and Cabinet affairs were among those sacked, said three government officials who did not wish to be named, adding they had not received official confirmation yet of who was being replaced.
Shiites have long complained of discrimination in government services such as housing and health, and analysts in Bahrain say reshuffling these portfolios is another gesture to the Shiite opposition after the release of political prisoners.
One government source said Labor Minister Majeed al-Alawi, a former opposition activist, could become housing minister.
Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Nazar al-Baharna, one of the highest-ranking Shiite government officials, could be made minister of health, the source added.
The government denies there is any discrimination against Shiites in Bahrain and tens of thousands of government loyalists have also taken to the streets in recent days, saying that reforms launched by the king a decade ago resulted in freedoms and a level of democracy unique in the Gulf.
The sources also said that Sheikh Ahmed bin Attiatullah al-Khalifa, minister for Cabinet affairs, was likely to be replaced.
The Shiite opposition has linked him to an alleged government plan, leaked in 2006, to alter the sectarian balance of Bahrain. The government has denied there was such a plan.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese