Two exiled Bahraini leaders return

Thousands of Bahrainis have turned out to greet two opposition leaders on their return home after years of exile.

One of them, Abdurrahman al-Naimi, a Sunni Muslim opposition leader, had spent nearly thirty years in exile.

He returned home with Abdel-Nabi al-Ikri, a Shi'ite Muslim.

The two men had returned under the general amnesty granted to the opposition last month by the emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Issa al-Khalifa.

The move was part of wider reforms promised by the emir after the country had voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to support a charter calling for the setting up of a partly-elected parliament, a constitutional monarchy and an independent judiciary.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service