The phone calls that upended their lives came during a family lunch, or while they were at the gym. One man heard the news from a friend, who told him to rush to the bank to withdraw his savings while he still could.
Some of them thought it was a joke, at first. Then Bahrain’s state news agency published their names, confirming that they and their children were among 69 people whose citizenship had been revoked.
Officials in Bahrain, the Persian Gulf monarchy that these families called home, were accusing them of disloyalty during the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. A government statement on April 27 described them as individuals of “non-Bahraini origin” who were being stripped of their nationality for “glorifying or sympathizing with hostile Iranian acts.”
For weeks, Bahrain had been arresting people on similar accusations. Some had shared videos online showing missile and drone attacks that Iran had launched at Bahrain, a close U.S. ally that hosts a major American naval base.
The accusations were bewildering for many of the 69 people, whose Persian ancestors had settled in Bahrain, an island nation in the Gulf, generations ago. Some of them told The New York Times that they had no idea why their names were on the list and, having no other nationality, were now stateless.
Within days of the announcement, Bahraini officials summoned the male head of each family, confiscated all of their identification documents and forced them to buy plane tickets to Iran, according to eight people interviewed by The Times.
The people who detailed their ordeals either had their own citizenship revoked or were the parents of children who had lost their citizenship. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing further retribution from the Bahraini government. Where possible, their accounts were corroborated by viewing documents, boarding passes and photographs from their journeys.
The Bahraini government did not respond to request for comment or detailed questions about the cases of the 69 people. The move to strip them of their citizenship follows a shift toward deeper authoritarianism in several of the Gulf Arab monarchies that has been accelerated by the regional war.
Home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, Bahrain is ruled by a Sunni Muslim royal family. A majority of its citizens, however, are Twelver Shiites, members of a branch of Islam that is Iran’s state religion.
The 69 people whose citizenship was revoked were all Shiites with Persian ancestry, according to Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, the director of advocacy for the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, a human rights group in London.
The Bahraini government has long accused Iran of meddling in its internal affairs and stirring up dissent among Shiites, who complain of discrimination.
Bahrain also has a long history of crushing dissent. In 2011, the authorities violently put down a pro-democracy uprising and, since then, have revoked the citizenship of hundreds of people — a move that human rights organizations say has become a tool for political repression.
Those revocations were subject to a court process, allowing people to appeal. But a recent royal decree declared citizenship in Bahrain a “sovereign matter,” removing judicial oversight for revocations and leaving no avenue for appeal.
All of the eight people interviewed said that Bahraini officials had refused to tell their families what misdeeds they had allegedly committed, and did not allow them to challenge the decision. Many of them were deported so swiftly that they did not have time to sell their homes and cars or pack up their belongings, they said.
“Everything I built in my life has gone with the wind,” said Ali Abdulnabi, 31, who was expelled from Bahrain in early May along with his wife and newborn daughter, and believes he was targeted over a video he shared on social media on the first day of the war, showing smoke rising from an area of Bahrain that was near a U.S. military facility.
He said he was now trapped in Azerbaijan, where most of the families were sent en route to Iran. “I’m living in a state of extreme anxiety, fear and panic,” he said.
On May 1, Bahrain’s king, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, delivered scathing remarks implying that the people whose nationality had been revoked were traitors.
“His Majesty stressed that those who betray the nation do not deserve the honor of belonging to it or the privilege of living on its land,” the state news agency reported.
“His Majesty added that stability will not be restored, nor will normal life resume, until ranks are cleansed of every traitor and accomplice,” it also wrote.
Bahrain is not the only country to have pursued mass citizenship withdrawals in recent years, but the phenomenon appears to be especially prevalent in Gulf countries. Kuwait, for instance, has stripped tens of thousands of people of their citizenship in recent years as its leaders dramatically reshape their definition of what it means to be Kuwaiti.
Even so, the April revocations in Bahrain were highly unusual, said Mr. Alwadaei, the rights activist, who was himself stripped of his citizenship in 2015. The authorities had never taken such a step against entire families before, he said, adding that the 69 names released in April included children as young as a few months old. And before the war with Iran, it was rare for them to expel those stripped of citizenship, he said.
When the list of 69 names came out in late April, Mr. Abdulnabi, the man now stranded in Azerbaijan, was at work, he said, and did not notice that he and his three-month-old daughter were on the list. Soon after, he said, he was summoned by the authorities and forced to surrender his passport, national ID card and driver’s license, along with his daughter’s passport.
He pressed the officials to tell him why, to no avail, he said. When they said that he would be expelled to Iran, he was shocked.
“I have no connection to Iran. I am not a supporter of Iran,” Mr. Abdulnabi said. “I have been stripped of my nationality and citizenship on pretexts I don’t understand.”
Several of the people said they had begged the officials to let them travel elsewhere — pointing out that Iran was at war and that they had no legal right to reside there and no place to stay once they arrived.
The officials refused to bend, they said.
The first group of people to be expelled was issued temporary travel documents and forced to buy flights to Iran via Turkey, but Turkish authorities turned them back, according to several of the people who were interviewed.
After that, most of the people were issued new passports, valid for one year only, and told to travel to Iran via Azerbaijan, several of the people said.
They had roughly one week to try to settle their affairs in Bahrain. They resigned from their jobs, bade farewell to loved ones and packed whatever they could fit into a handful of suitcases, they said.
After arriving in Azerbaijan, several of the families obtained visas to travel to Britain or other European countries, where they have applied for asylum, they said. They are now awaiting decisions on their cases, their fates unclear.
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