Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain
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The Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain was an Iranian based Shia resistance group that advocated Islamic revolution in Bahrain against the Sunni ruling Al Khalifa family in the 1970s and 1980s. It came to international prominence as the front organisation for the 1981 failed coup in Bahrain, which attempted to install Iraqi Ayatollah Hadi al-Modarresi as the spiritual leader of a theocratic state. Al Modarresi had been given asylum in Bahrain in the late 1970s after members of his family were killed by Saddam Hussein in Iraq, but shortly after his arrival he established the terror group and then fled to Iran.
The organisation carried out a series of actions in Bahrain in the 1990s. On 1 November 1996, the group claimed responsibility for the bombing of the Diplomat Hotel, with the group telling the Associated Press "We put a bomb in the Diplomat hotel 20 minutes ago...after the feast...tell the government that we will destroy everyplace."[1]
Although banned in the 1990s when its leaders worked out of Iran, King Hamad's reforms allowed them to return to Bahrain to work within the political process, and most today are active in the Islamic Action Party and the related Bahrain Centre for Human Rights.
