Saudi Arabia executed 47 people on Saturday for planning and carrying out terrorist attacks, including the prominent Shia cleric and activist Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, triggering riots at Riyadh’s embassy in Tehran.
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Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said Iran’s diplomatic mission and related entities in Saudi Arabia have been ordered to leave.
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Amnesty International criticised Nimr’s arrest for being part of a campaign by the Saudi authorities to quash all dissent. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was “deeply dismayed” by the executions and called again for an end to the death penalty.
“The unjustly spilled blood of this oppressed martyr will no doubt soon show its effect and divine vengeance will befall Saudi politicians”, state TV quoted Khamenei as saying.
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56-year-old cleric Nimr, who spent more than a decade studying theology in Iran, was among a group of 47 Shiites and Sunnis executed Saturday on charges of terrorism.
While Shiite leaders hit out at Saudi Arabia’s actions, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain defended their Sunni ally, saying the executions were necessary to confront extremism. The cleric was a prominent critic of the Saudi regime, and his conviction of terrorism has further strained relations between Sunni and Shia Muslims in the region, causing fear that those tensions could continue to spiral into violent clashes.
In a calm, but angry tones, Jubeir claimed to have defeated Iran in Yemen, referring to the Saudi-led coalition against Houthi fighters in the country.
Protesters in the Iranian capital attacked the Saudi embassy with petrol bombs in the wake of the executions.
An official list published included Sunnis convicted of involvement in Al-Qaeda attacks that killed Saudis and foreigners in 2003 and 2004.
Morocco’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the country is concerned that the situation could take an unmanageable dimension, and counts on the wisdom of Saudi and Iranian officials to prevent the current situation from spreading to other countries of the region already facing many challenges and various elements of fragility. Religious leaders and political figures in Iran, Yemen, and Lebanon warned that al-Nimr’s killing would prompt widespread anger and worsen sectarian tensions in the Middle East, according to The Guardian.
“Iran’s history is full of negative interference and hostility in Arab issues, and it is always accompanied by destruction”, he told a news conference.
Dion also expressed concerns over the intensifying sectarian tensions resulting from the execution, particularly after the ensuing violence and Iran and subsequent severing of diplomatic ties between the two nations.
Now Iraq’s former PM Nuri al-Maliki now says the execution “will topple the Saudi regime” – a view shared by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
Nimr was considered a terrorist by Riyadh but hailed in Iran as a champion of the rights of Saudi Arabia’s marginalised Shia Muslim minority.
Smoke rises from Saudi Arabia’s embassy during a demonstration in Tehran Jan. 2, 2016.
Protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran late on Saturday, setting fire to the building before being driven back by police.
Al-Nimr, who was in his 50s, was a widely revered Shiite Muslim cleric from eastern Saudi Arabia who was convicted in October 2014 of sedition and other charges and sentenced to death. Qassem said Saudi Arabia had “arrived at its point of maximum weakness and is digging its own grave”.
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Iran-linked cells smuggling explosives and arms to Bahrain and Kuwait have also been uncovered, the kingdom said.
