Four sentenced to die for killing police officers in Bahrain unrest

A BAHRAINI court has sentenced four men to death over the killing of two policemen during recent political unrest, state media reported.

The ruling yesterday came amid heightened antagonism between Bahrain's Shi'ite Muslim majority and its Sunni ruling family after the island kingdom crushed anti-government protests last month with military help from fellow Sunni-led Gulf Arab neighbours.

The verdicts handed out by a military court marked only the third time in more than three decades that Bahrain had issued a death sentence.

Three other defendants in the current case received life sentences. Rights groups and relatives of the condemned men dismissed the proceedings as a farce.

"They were activists in their villages and we think they were targeted because of their activities," said Nabeel Rajab, head of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights.

Bahrain's state news agency said the verdicts could be appealed and that defendants had "every judicial guarantee according to law and in keeping with human rights standards."

Relatives of the condemned men disputed this. "Even the accusations contradicted each other," said a relative of one of the men sentenced to death, who said there were discrepancies between statements by prosecutors and coroner reports issued at the time of the killings.