A court in Bahrain has handed down lengthy jail terms to three anti-regime activists after convicting them of exploding a car in Manama last year.

The trio, whose names were not released, were convicted on Tuesday of “placing a gas cylinder” inside a vehicle in the capital in February 2014 to detonate it, the official Bahrain News Agency, BNA, reported.

The court also claimed that the defendants had “deliberately” started a fire and had been in possession of “petrol bombs.”

The activists were sentenced to 15 years in prison each.

Bahrain, a close ally of the United States in the region, has been witnessing almost daily protests against the ruling Al Khalifa dynasty since early 2011.

Bahraini forces have killed close to 90 activists over the past years of uprising, while hundreds of protesters as well as notable opposition figures continue to remain under arrest in the regime’s notorious prisons.

Another Bahraini court on Tuesday gave a six-month prison sentence to Shia activist, Nabeel Rajab, the president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, for insulting the Manama regime on his Twitter account.

Earlier this month, Human Rights Watch urged Western governments to break their silence on Bahrain’s continued detention of opposition figures.

Joe Stork, who serves as the HRW’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa region, described the Al Khalifa regime as a “serial offender” in prosecuting the “peaceful critics.”

Prominent Bahraini cleric, Sheikh Ali Salman, who is the secretary general of the main opposition party, al-Wefaq, was also arrested on December 28, 2014, after the Manama regime accused him of seeking regime change and collaborating with foreign powers, charges that Salman and his party have vehemently denied.

MR/HSN/SS