Shia cleric among 47 executed in Saudi, Iran warns of high price
Executions take place in 12 cities across the country through firing squads and beheadings
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia executed a prominent Shia cleric alongside dozens of al Qaeda militants on Saturday, signalling intolerance of jihad and minority Shia violence and stirring a rise in sectarian tensions across the region.
Most of the 47 executed were convicted of attacks in Saudi Arabia a decade ago, but four, including prominent cleric Sheikh Nimr al-nimr, were Shia Muslims accused of shooting policemen during anti-government protests.
The executions took place in 12 cities across the country, four prisons using firing squads and the others beheading. The bodies were then hanged from gibbets in the most severe form of punishment available in the kingdom’s Sharia Islamic law.
Riyadh’s main regional rival Iran and its Shia allies immediately reacted with vigorous condemnation of the execution.
A top Iranian cleric warned the kingdom’s Al Saud ruling family would be “wiped from the pages of history”, Yemen’s Houthi group described Nimr as a “holy warrior” and Lebanese militia Hezbollah said Riyadh had made “a grave mistake”.
“The Saudi government supports terrorist movements and extremists, but confronts domestic critics with oppression and execution,” said Hossein Jaber Ansari, spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry.
“The Saudi government will pay a high price for following these policies,” the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying.
The simultaneous execution on Saturday was the biggest mass execution for such offences in Saudi Arabia since the 1980 killing of 63 jihadis who seized Mecca’s Grand Mosque in 1979.
The 43 Sunni jihadis executed included several prominent al Qaeda figures, including those convicted of responsibility for attacks on Western compounds, government buildings and diplomatic missions that killed hundreds from 2003-06.
Saudi police increased security in Qatif district of Eastern Province, a Shia majority area and site of the protests from 2011-13 in which several police as well as over 20 local demonstrators were shot dead.
Iran summoned Saudi diplomat in Tehran to protest the execution of al-nimr, Iranian state television said.
SENDING A MESSAGE
Mustafa Alani, a security analyst close to the interior ministry, said: “There is a huge popular pressure on the government to punish those people. It included all the leaders of al Qaeda, all the ones responsible for shedding blood. It sends a message.”
Analysts have speculated that the execution of the four Shias was partly to demonstrate to Saudi Arabia’s majority Sunni Muslims that the government did not differentiate between political violence committed by the two sects.
However, human rights groups have consistently attacked the kingdom’s judicial process as unfair, pointing to accusations that confessions have been secured under torture and that defendants in court have been denied access to lawyers.