RIYADH // Saudi Arabia has put 32 people accused of spying for Iran on trial, local media reported on Monday.
They include 30 members of its own Shiite Muslim minority, an Iranian and an Afghan who were detained in 2013.
The trial is the first in recent memory for Saudis accused of spying and may stoke tensions between local Shiite and Sunni Muslims and with Iran, which strongly denied the accusations at the time.
Tensions escalated further in January when Riyadh broke off diplomatic ties following the storming of its Tehran embassy by protesters angered at Saudi Arabia's execution of a Shiite imam convicted of involvement in the killing of policemen.
Riyadh's bureau of public prosecution presented the charges against the 32 on Sunday at the specialised criminal court, which tries security offences, the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya channel reported.
The charges included establishing a spy ring with members of Iranian intelligence and passing them sensitive military information, seeking to sabotage Saudi economic interests, undermining community cohesion and inciting sectarian strife.
They also included supporting protests in the Shiite-majority region of Qatif in Eastern Province, recruiting others for espionage, sending encrypted reports to Iranian intelligence via email and committing high treason against the king.
The 32 were also charged with owning banned books and other publications, Al Arabiya and other Saudi-owned media reported.
Among those arrested in 2013 were an elderly university professor, a paediatrician, a banker and two imams. Most were from Al Ahsa, a mixed Shiite and Sunni region that is home to around half the members of the kingdom’s minority sect.
Meanwhile Bahrain said on Sunday it has adopted measures including travel curbs and monitoring of money transfers to counter Iran’s “interference” in the Sunni-ruled kingdom.
Interior minister Sheikh Rashid Al Khalifa spoke of the “dangers of Iran’s interference in the internal security” of Bahrain during a meeting with clerics, MPs and newspaper chiefs, said the official BNA news agency.
“We have taken a series of measures to confront the dangers of terrorism,” Sheikh Rashid said.
These include forming a committee to monitor money transfers and donations to combat the “financing of terrorism” and imposing travel restrictions on citizens, especially aged between 14 and 18, to “unsafe countries”, he said.
Bahrain has previously announced the dismantling of “terror” cells whose members it said were trained by Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards and Lebanon’s Shiite movement Hizbollah.
* Reuters and Agence France-Presse
