India’s Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted that Saudi authorities have released photos of pilgrims who died in Thursday’s stampede.
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There is no doubt about the former diplomat’s legal entry into Saudi Arabia, she added.
Meanwhile, the number of injured and missing Iranian pilgrims are 46 and 298, respectively.
“The Justice Department demands that the Saudi government put on trial those behind this incident“, Raeisi said, threatening to take the matter to global courts, according to state television.
The stampede broke out after two massive lines of pilgrims converged on each other from different direction at an intersection close to the five-storey Jamarat Bridge in Mina for symbolic stoning of the devil by throwing pebbles against three stone walls.
Several Muslim organisations in Kenya told The Standard that they were still compiling a report on the approximated 6,000 Kenyan Muslim pilgrims attending this year’s Hajj.
Relations between Shiite Iran and Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia were already severely strained by conflicts in Yemen and Syria, and an worldwide agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme.
State TV said Saudi Arabia has yet to issue visas for an Iranian delegation to visit the kingdom to oversee the treatment of injured Iranians and the repatriation of remains.
Later, addressing a press conference, he said he would write a letter to external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj requesting her to facilitate the early return of families, who lost their kin during the stampede.
Saudi King Salman, whose official title is “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques” in Mecca and Medina, ordered “a revision” of how the hajj is organised, and a formal Saudi inquiry is under way into the stampede.
“I believe that the Iranians should know better than to play politics with a tragedy that has befallen people who were performing their most sacred religious duty”, he said.
Saudi Arabia’s top cleric, Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh, said at the weekend the stampede was beyond human control and that the authorities are not responsible for what had happened.
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Saudi officials could not be immediately reached for comment about the discrepancy surrounding the death toll of the disaster in Mina.
