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A court on Sunday ordered the dissolution of Bahrain’s Shiite main opposition group Al-Wefaq, a judicial source said, despite international criticism of the Sunni-ruled Gulf kingdom’s intensified crackdown on
dissent.
The administrative court in Manama also ordered the funds of the group, accused by authorities of “harbouring terrorism” among other charges, to be seized by the government, the source said.
The ruling can still be appealed.
Al-Wefaq was the largest group in parliament before its lawmakers resigned in protest at the crushing of protests in 2011 calling for an elected government.
The court accused Al-Wefaq, which draws most of its support from Bahrain’s Shiite majority, of “inciting violence and encouraging demonstrations and sit-ins which could lead to sectarian strife in the country”.
It said the bloc had “criticised the performance of the state authorities — executive, judicial, and legislative”.
On June 28, Al-Wefaq’s defence lawyers withdrew from court proceedings in protest at the government’s push to accelerate the process, which had initially been set for October 6.
The court had already suspended all of Al-Wefaq’s activities on June 14, ordering its offices closed and assets frozen.
In October 2014, the administrative court banned Al-Wefaq for three months for violating the law on associations.
Political parties are banned in Bahrain, as in other Gulf Arab monarchies, so Al-Wefaq has the status of an association.
The justice ministry, which had requested that Al-Wefaq be dissolved, accuses the bloc of providing a haven for “terrorism, radicalisation and violence” and opening the way for “foreign interference” in the kingdom’s affairs.
That is an allusion to Iran which Bahrain, home to the US Fifth Fleet, accuses of fomenting unrest among its Shiite majority.
Al-Wefaq, also known as the Islamic National Accord Association, is heir to the Bahrain Freedom Movement which played a key role in Shiite-led anti-government protests in the 1990s that sought the restoration of the elected parliament scrapped in 1975.
In recent months, Manama has intensified its crackdown on leading Shiite figures.
Al-Wefaq’s chief, Shiite cleric Ali Salman, is serving a nine-year jail term for inciting violence after a court in May more than doubled his sentence.
His arrest in December 2014 sparked protests in Bahrain, already rocked by the Shiite-led uprising that erupted in February 2011.
Authorities have also stripped at least 261 people of their citizenship since 2012, according to the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, including the country’s Shiite spiritual leader Sheikh Isa Qassem.