Bahrain Adjourns Trial of Top Cleric amid Popular Protests
The planned trial had been planned to be held by criminal court in Manama on Thursday but was adjourned after Sheikh Qassim refused to appear in court.
It came after Bahraini people held rallies across the country in support of the senior cleric on Wednesday night.
The demonstrators called for an end to the trial of Sheikh Qassem.
Bahraini authorities have either arrested or summoned tens of Shia clerics over the past few months.
On June 20, the Manama regime revoked the citizenship of Sheikh Qassim less than a week after suspending the country’s main opposition bloc, the al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, and dissolving the Islamic Enlightenment Institution, founded by Sheikh Qassim, and the opposition al-Risala Islamic Association.
The regime later said it would put the senior cleric on trial on charges of "illegal fund collections, money laundering and helping terrorism.”
But Sheikh Qassim has not appeared in any of the court sessions in the past weeks.
Anti-regime protesters have staged numerous demonstrations in Bahrain on an almost daily basis since February 14, 2011, calling on the Al Khalifah regime to relinquish power.
Troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — themselves repressive Arab regimes — were deployed to the country in March that year to assist the Manama government in its crackdown on peaceful pro-democracy rallies.
Scores of people have been killed and hundreds of others injured or arrested in Manama’s crackdown on the anti-regime activists.
