10 Facts About Ali Salman

Ali Salman Ahmed Salman is a Bahraini Twelver Shi'a cleric and the Secretary-General of the Al-Wefaq political society.

Ali Salman continued opposition activities from London, where he was associated with the Bahrain Freedom Movement.

Ali Salman originally studied in Qom, a major centre of Twelver Shi'a theological thinking in Iran.

Ali Salman is a Twelver Shiite who originally followed the quietist teachings of Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Abul-Qassim al-Khoei, the spiritual leader of much of the Shia world until his death in 1992.

Ali Salman is widely perceived to have been one of the leaders of the 1990s uprising in Bahrain.

Ali Salman's arrest sparked a cycle of mass-demonstrations that led to the death of a dozen demonstrators and the incarceration of hundreds of others.

Ali Salman worked independently from the group but was in cooperation with them in order to achieve the political demands of the Bahrain uprising, mainly by releasing regular communiques distributed in Bahrain in which they demanded the reinstatement of the Parliament.

Ali Salman has proved his ability to contain the anger of the masses that pray behind him and listen to his sermon every Friday.

Ali Salman has been able to spread self-restraint among his followers even in the peak of regime-terror and brutality during the state of emergency in 2011 following the wide Arab-Spring-inspired pro-democracy protests.

Ali Salman was arrested on 28 December 2014 on charges for spying and colluding with Qatar to overthrow the government of Bahrain.