SHI’ITE cleric Sheikh Ali Salman, who was a central figure in Bahrain’s 2011 Arab Spring protests, was sentenced to life in prison for spying today.

He had previously been acquitted on the same charges by a lower court in June.

Human rights groups and activists say the charges against him are politically motivated and related to his work as a leading opposition figure.

Parliamentary elections are set to take place in weeks in the repressive kingdom, but without the al-Wefaq political group that Mr Salman once led, which was dissolved in 2016 on the orders of the monarchy.

Mr Salman, together with his co-defendants in the case — Sheikh Hassan Ali Juma Sultan and Ali Mahdi Ali al-Aswad — are also former al-Wefaq officials.

The three faced charges of disclosing sensitive information to Qatar that could harm Bahrain’s security in exchange for financial compensation. Prosecutors presented recorded phone conversations as evidence.

Last year, Bahrain state television broadcast the recorded calls between Mr Salman and then Qatar prime minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani during the 2011 protests.

Bahrain is one of four Arab countries that have been boycotting Qatar for over a year as part of a wider diplomatic dispute.

A government-sponsored report on the 2011 protests and unrest noted that Bahrain’s opposition had accepted an idea for mediation by Qatar during the uprising, but Bahrain’s government had rejected it.

Mr Salman’s supporters say that his calls to Qatar were related to those efforts and that recordings were edited to suggest otherwise.