MANAMA (Dispatches) -- Bahrain intensified its crackdown on Saturday, with security forces maintaining restrictions on Shia religious gatherings for a 108th consecutive week and opposition groups calling for a “Day of Public Anger” ahead of a Nov. 8 court ruling on detained clerics, according to rights groups.
Security forces deployed tear gas and stun grenades overnight to disperse demonstrators in Shiite-majority villages and suburbs surrounding Manama, local reports said. 
Protesters erected burning tire barricades to block security convoys, as unrest fueled by what organizers describe as an intensified campaign of arbitrary detentions targeting Shia religious figures and activists continued into a second night.
The confrontations coincided with the 108th consecutive week in which authorities prevented Shia Muslims from holding Friday prayers in the town of Al-Diraz, west of the capital. 
Security forces surrounded the Imam Sadiq Mosque and blocked worshippers from reaching the site, according to the February 14 Coalition and Manama Post. The prayers have been restricted since October 2024, following popular commemorations for Hezbollah’s leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
Rights groups have documented a broader crackdown. A joint report by SALAM for Democracy and Human Rights and the Bahrain Forum for Human Rights recorded the arrests of 64 Shiite religious scholars between March and August 2026, including 44 detained on a single day in May. 
The report cited torture and ill-treatment during interrogation and described restrictions on Ashura observances that led to the cancellation of 103 processions or religious gatherings. 
A separate submission to the UN Human Rights Committee noted that 59 clerics were arrested between March and June 2026, many after home raids, with charges framed in terms of terrorism or foreign allegiance.
Authorities have arrested more than 300 people since late February on charges of “sympathizing with Iran” and detained at least 53 Shia clerics, rights groups say. 
On April 27, authorities stripped 69 people and their families of citizenship for expressing sympathy for Iran, and parliament passed a decree eliminating judicial review over citizenship decisions. A criminal court later sentenced 34 people to prison terms ranging from one to 10 years.
A March death in custody—Sayed Mohamed Abdul-Mohsen al-Mosawi, whose father observed physical evidence of torture—became a flashpoint. Opposition groups condemned the prosecution of senior Shia clerics in an Oct. 29 statement, calling the measures sectarian targeting and urging peaceful solidarity ahead of the Nov. 8 verdict. 
The February 14 Revolutionary Youth Coalition designated the date a “Day of Public Anger,” prompting heightened security deployments along Budaiya Highway.
Human Rights Watch says political opposition members, human rights defenders and journalists remain imprisoned for their roles in the 2011 pro-democracy protests, excluded from royal pardons. 
The 2018 “political isolation laws” bar former opposition members and former prisoners from running for parliament or obtaining the “Good Conduct Certificates” required for employment and university admission.