MANAMA/DUBAI — At a wake in Iran’s city of Qom in February, a small group of Bahraini emigres and clerics mourned a young militant killed in a gun battle with Bahrain’s security forces.
The ceremony proves Iran’s widening influence over an armed fringe in Bahrain.
The dead 29-year-old militant, Reda Al-Ghasra, was shot and killed when security forces ambushed the speedboat carrying him and fellow fugitives at dawn on February 9. Ghasra had just a few weeks earlier escaped from a prison where he was serving a life sentence for terrorism.
Ghasra’s two brothers, both wanted on terror charges, also appeared at his wake in Qom. They played a recorded phone call of Reda saying his boat was on its way. The Bahraini government has asserted he was fleeing to Iran.
An assessment names Sanadi as the leader of the Ashtar Brigades, a militant group that has carried out bombings and shootings directed at Bahrain’s police.
According to the security assessment, Sanadi tasked Ghasra with forming militant cells with Iranian help.
An analysis of years of statements by Bahrain’s public prosecutor on Ashtar Brigades suspects suggests that the group operates in cells of fewer than 10 young men overseen by emigre militants like Sanadi based in Iran.
Recruited on religious pilgrimages or study trips to Iran, Bahrain’s prosecutor has said, the suspects were given weapons and explosives training in Iran or neighboring Iraq.
Sanadi has powerful allies in Iran, where he has lived since he went into exile in 2012.
The official website of Ali Khamenei published an editorial by Sanadi in December making wild accusations.
The US State Department put Sanadi on its proscribed “terrorist” list on March 17. His name appears alongside leaders in Al-Qaeda and Daesh. The US cited Sanadi’s links to the Ashtar Brigades which, it said, “receives funding and support from the Government of Iran.”
Bahrain says Sanadi organized deadly attacks on police and smuggling arms from Iran.
Bahraini authorities consider the Ashtar Brigades to be the armed wing of Sanadi’s Islamic Wafa Movement, a political party that is banned in Bahrain.
Sanadi, the security documents say, receives funding from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and commissioned Ghasra to organize the military training of Bahraini militants in Iran by the IRGC and in Iraq by the Hezbollah Brigades militia.
The Ashtar Brigades announced an alliance with the Iran-backed Hezbollah Brigades via an online statement in February.
Sanadi spoke of his relationship with Ghasra in a communication to his followers on messaging app Telegram, dated in March and seen by Reuters. “I found him a lover of (Shiites), ready for the highest sacrifice and dedicated to the choice of resistance.”
Ghasra’s brother Yasser, speaking to Reuters from Iran, acknowledged that his brother Reda was a fighter. He declined to comment on links between his brother and Sanadi.
Iran’s promotion of Sanadi appears to point to an endorsement of his agenda. Next to an Iranian flag, Sanadi delivered a sermon at Friday prayers in the country’s most prestigious mosque in Qom in September — an exceptional honor.
Sanadi also took to the main stage at a 2013 conference of Ahl Al-Bayt, a Qom-based global fraternity of scholars founded by Khamenei in 1990. — Reuters
