A court in Bahrain has handed down a death sentence to one activist and life imprisonments to 22 others in the latest instance of the regime’s intensifying crackdown on dissent and members of civil society.

The tiny Gulf state’s High Criminal Court also revoked the citizenship of two of those convicted, terror crime prosecution chief Ahmed al-Hammadi said in a statement published by the official BNA news agency. Judicial sources said that all the defendants were Shiite and that 16 were tried in absentia, without giving further details.

Hammadi said members of the group were convicted of carrying out bombings in two Shia villages in early December past year. One of the bombings, in Damistan village, killed a Jordanian policeman working in Bahrain under a security and training exchange agreement.

The second bombing took place the next day in the nearby village of Karzakan, killing an elderly Bahraini man.

Meanwhile, an appeals court upheld the death sentence Thursday against a Shiite convicted of forming and leading a similar “terrorist group” that killed a policeman in a bombing in the Shiite village of Aker past year, Hammadi said.

The Bahraini judiciary has also come under fire by many human rights groups for handing down long-term sentences to anti-regime protesters and activists in the country.

Moreover, it sentenced 29 people to jail terms ranging from five years to life imprisonment over their alleged involvement in a bomb attack last year.

The Sunni-led monarchy had been faced with unrest and protests since 2011 by the small Persian Gulf nation’s Shiite majority demanding greater political rights.