What do you say when you find out that terrorist attempts are being planned to disrupt the peace and security of Bahrain?
How do you feel when you learn that a few twisted minds in Bahrain are taking foreign help to smuggle arms and ammunition into this peaceful country?
It was shocking to all of us, last week, to hear that the Ministry of Interior, in four operations conducted over two days helped seize a large cache of arms and detain over 17 persons planning acts of sabotage in the kingdom.
And, therefore, we must congratulate the incredible work done by various directorates of the Ministry of interior in successfully thwarting the arms-smuggling attempt.
Here is a quick look at the four operations, based on what the Public Security Chief Major-General Tareq Al Hassan told the media.
In the first operation, they found a stolen car in Hoora with explosive devices – a gas cylinder, two fuel plates and a homemade pipe bomb connected to a remote control phone – in it.
In the second, the General Directorate of Criminal Investigations and Forensic Evidence, the Coast Guard, the police air patrol, and the Royal Bahrain Naval Force worked together.
The Coast Guard radar had located a boat with a number of people aboard heading out of the coast of Karranah village towards the north. Thirteen wanted people in security cases were aboard, one of them was a Saudi national, with their passports, different currencies, mobile phones, as well as clothes and personal belongings.
In the third, the Coast Guard, on its radar, located a boat 118 marine miles off north eastern Bahrain, in international waters, sailing towards the Kingdom. The target was followed until it entered territorial waters in eastern Al Jarem, and with the support of the police air patrols, seized two nautical miles away from the Karranah village coast.
The contraband seized included 38 explosives, 12 EFP armor-piercing explosives, 30 Nokia mobile phones with batteries, a satellite phone (Thurrayya) with SIM card, 29 circuit boards to be fixed on mobile phones in order to set off bombs, a PK machine gun and 12 cartridges, a large number of machine gun bullets, three fuses (explosive), 50 Iranian made hand bombs, 295 commercial detonators on which it was written “made in Syria”, C4 and TNT explosives.
In the fourth operation, a warehouse full of explosives and ammunition, located in Al Qurrayah Village, was raided, based on information from terror suspects. The seized items include 50 hand grenades, PK automatic weapons and 1,023 rounds of ammunition.
The fact that arms that were being smuggled in were ‘made in Iran’, and ‘made in Syria’ show us the double standards of some countries.
While they are overtly saying they want peace, they are in fact, covertly in the business of spreading terror.
If we go by the police findings, many suspects are admitting that they have been trained in bomb making, and also in creating and inciting terror abroad. And that some are still being recruited.
It is against this terror mongering that Bahrain must fight.
Bahrain must stand united, and strongly condemn this foreign sponsorship of terror. And Bahrainis must be resolute in their will to solve internal problems by discussion and dialogue, not by inviting violence and hatred into this peaceful country.