Saudis execute terrorist who shot BBC man
Protesters storm embassy in Iran after talismanic critic of kingdom is among 47 to be shot or beheaded
THE convicted terrorist behind the attempted assassination of the BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner was executed by Saudi Arabia yesterday.
Adel al-Dhubaiti was one of 47 people killed in the country’s largest mass execution in decades.
Dhubaiti was sentenced to death in November 2014 for the attack on Gardner, who was shot six times and left paralysed. His colleague, the BBC cameraman Simon Cumbers, was murdered in the ambush in June 2004 during filming of a report about al-Qaeda in a town close to the capital Riyadh.
Gardner, who fought back from the injuries to resume his career, declined to comment. He has said he could never forgive Dhubaiti. “He [Dhubaiti] is completely unrepentant. He has never said sorry. He is still in the mindset that he had when he attacked us. So forgiveness is not really an option,” Gardner told The Sunday Telegraph in November 2014 after Dhubaiti’s conviction.
Yesterday’s mass executions provoked widespread outrage and heightened sectarian tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent Shia cleric and critic of the Saudi ruling royal family, was among those executed. Iran said Saudi Arabia would pay a “high price” for his death.
AN ANGRY crowd stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran following the execution of a prominent Shia Muslim cleric yesterday.
The mob hurled petrol bombs at the building in the Iranian capital before being cleared by police. Pictures on social media showed some protesters forcing their way into the embassy, smashing furniture and starting small fires.
Amid rising tensions, Saudi Arabia had earlier summoned the Iranian envoy to the kingdom in protest at Tehran’s initial angry response to the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.
He was killed alongside 46 others including dozens of al-Qaeda members, in the country’s biggest mass execution in three decades. The cleric was a talismanic figure in protests that broke out in 2011 in the Sunni-ruled kingdom’s east, where the Shia minority complains of marginalisation. His arrest in July 2012 sparked days of protest.
Hundreds of Shias marched through Mr Nimr’s home district of Qatif in protest at the execution, chanting “down with the Al Saud”, a reference to the Saudi ruling family. Protests took place as far afield as Pakistan, India and Indiancontrolled Kashmir.
Hossein Jaber Ansari, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, accused Riyadh of hypocrisy. “The Saudi government supports terrorist movements and extremists, but confronts domestic critics with oppression and execution,” he said.
Lebanon’s Supreme Islamic Shia Council called the execution a “grave mistake”, while Haider al-Abadi, Iraq’s prime minister, said it would have repercussions on regional security.
Hilary Benn, Britain’s shadow foreign secretary, last night described the execution as “profoundly wrong”. The Foreign Office said the UK opposed the death penalty “in all circumstances and in every country”.
The executions took place in 12 cities in Saudi Arabia, with four prisons using firing squads and the others carrying out beheadings. Describing the executions as acts of “mercy” to prisoners who might have committed crimes on their release, Saudi Arabia’s leading cleric, Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al Sheikh, said they were carried out in line with Islamic law and the need to safeguard the kingdom’s security.
The list of people executed included Sunnis convicted of involvement in alQaeda bombings and shootings that killed Saudis and foreigners in the kingdom in 2003 and 2004.
Among the executed was Nimr Sahaj al-Bougmi, who was convicted of participation in the attack on the Khobar oil complex in the same year which killed 22 people, among them a Briton, Michael Hamilton.
Notably absent from the list was Mr Nimr’s nephew, Ali al-Nimr, whose arrest at the age of 17 and alleged torture during detention sparked condemnation from rights watchdogs and the United States.
Saudi allies offered their support. In the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the foreign minister, called the executions a “clear message against terrorism”.
Bahrain, which has faced unrest from its Shia majority population, also backed Riyadh in “all deterrent and needed measures it takes to confront violence and extremism”. Police used tear gas to disperse small demonstrations condemning the executions.
In comments posted on Twitter, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, compared Saudi Arabia with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which is renowned for its mass executions.
Iranian state media showed rolling coverage of clerics and secular officials eulogising Mr Nimr and predicting the downfall of Saudi Arabia’s ruling family.