On dubious trial

THIS week Bahrain's State Security Court began the closed-door trial of 59 people who were arrested last June. Soon after their arrest, half a dozen of the accused were paraded on television where they “confessed” to having been recruited by Iran, and trained by Hizbullah in Lebanon, in order to overthrow the Bahraini regime. Iran denied this, as it would. But doubts about the unsavoury parade were rein forced by contradictions in the testimony--and by the Bahraini security services' known propensity to turn to torture.