THE former prime minister of Iraq, Nuri al-Maliki, says the execution of the prominent Shi’ite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr by Saudi Arabia will be the downfall of the Gulf kingdom’s government.
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Hours later, Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi said 40 people had been arrested on suspicion of taking part in the embassy attack and investigators were pursuing other suspects, according to the semi-official ISNA news agency.
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Demonstrators protesting against the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr broke into the embassy building, smashed furniture and started fires before being ejected by police.
Saudis cut ties with Iran following Shiite cleric execution
However, Ayatollah Khamenei said the Shia cleric had been executed for his opposition to Saudi Arabia’s Sunni rulers. Hundreds of protesters later demonstrated in front of the embassy and in a central Tehran square.
“The Saudi government supports terrorist movements and extremists, but confronts domestic critics with oppression and execution”, Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Hossein Jaber Ansari said.
The website of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, carried a picture of a Saudi executioner next to notorious Islamic State executioner “Jihadi John”, with the caption “Any differences?”.
The executions set off a series of condemnations from Shia Muslims, particularly those in predominantly Shia Iran, where protesters threw Molotov cocktails into the Saudi embassy in Tehran and looted the officers.
Demonstrations also took place in Bahrain, Turkey, Pakistan and northern India. The Saudi Embassy in Baghdad is preparing to formally reopen for the first time in almost 25 years.
“The UK opposes the death penalty in all circumstances and in every country”, a foreign office statement said, noting that Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond “regularly raises human rights issues with his counterparts in countries of concern, including Saudi Arabia”.
Protesters clamored in downtown Toronto Sunday to rail against Saudi Arabia’s “unjust massacre” of prisoners including a prominent Shiite cleric, and to call on Ottawa to push for change.
Government-appointed clerics have for years denounced al Qaeda and Islamic State as religious “deviants”, while the government has cracked down on jihadists at home, squeezed their funding streams overseas and stopped them travelling to fight.
Nimr’s brother, Mohammed, said he had been told the corpse would not be returned to the family.
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Asharq al-Awsat, which is owned by a member of the Saudi royal family, also focussed more on Sunday on the Iranian reaction than on the executions themselves. British reporter Frank Gardner, now the BBC’s security correspondent, was seriously wounded in the attack and paralyzed, but survived.
