Manama has tightened the siege on the village where the country’s highest religious authority, Sheikh Isa Qassim, remains under house arrest.
Security forces have also started removing all portraits of the senior cleric in the lead-up to the annual Ashura commemorations, which marks the martyrdom of the grandson of Islam’s Prophet Mohammad, Imam Hussein, and is widely observed by Shiite Muslims worldwide.
Since the start of Bahrain’s popular uprising in 2011, Manama has enforced strict restrictions on the commemoration of the Shiite religious occasion.