Three men sentenced to death in Bahrain

A Bahraini court sentenced three Shia men to death on Thursday and jailed seven others for life after convicting them of killing three policemen last year, prosecutors said.

The supreme criminal court also stripped eight of the defendants of their Bahraini citizenship over the 3 March bombing in the Shia village of Diah, the deadliest attack since security forces crushed Shia-led protests in March 2011.

The three policemen were Mohammed Raslan, Ammar Abdo Ali Mohammed and Lieutenant Tariq Mohammed Al-Shehi.

Al-Shehi, who is from the UAE, is the the first foreign officer killed since Saudi Arabia and the UAE deployed troops and police to Bahrain to support its crackdown on the demonstrations.

The court heard that the defendants planted three remote detonating bombs on a public highway and mobilised protesters to join a funeral in Diah to lure in police. Once security forces arrived at the scene the defendants detonated a bomb, which caused the deaths of the policemen and injured thirteen others.

Two of the defendants were among the founders of the little-known Al-Ashtar Brigades, a group that has reportedly claimed responsibility for several attacks in the Shia-majority kingdom, including a July 2013 bombing outside a Sunni mosque.

Bahrain, which is home to the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, has suffered unrest since the crushing of the 2011 Arab Spring demonstrations for parliamentary government and a constitutional monarchy.

At least 89 people have been killed in clashes with security forces, while hundreds have been arrested and put on trial, human rights groups say.