Firebombs were hurled yesterday at the premises of a Bahraini Baathist group that has been receiving condolences on the death of Saddam Hussein, the group and the interior ministry said. The attack with two Molotov cocktails targeted “freedom of opinion and belief, and was an attempt at intimidation,” Rasul al-Jashi, secretary general of the Nationalist Democratic Rally Association (NDRA), said in a statement. “Such cowardly acts will not deter the NDRA from making its principled stands on national and pan-Arab causes known,” he said.
BahrainÂ’s NDRA, an opposition pan-Arab nationalist group that includes pro-Baath activists, on Wednesday opened its headquarters in a district of southwest Manama to receive condolences for the ousted Iraqi president, who was hanged last Saturday after he was convicted of crimes against humanity.
An interior ministry statement confirmed that Molotov cocktails were hurled at the NDRA’s premises by hooded assailants, causing minor damage to the building. “Efforts are ongoing to find the perpetrators, arrest them and bring them to justice,” the statement said.