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Saudi Arabia Puts 47 to Death, Including Prominent Shiite Cleric Saudi Arabia Puts 47 to Death, Including Prominent Shiite Cleric
(about 2 hours later)
BAGHDAD — Saudi Arabia carried out a mass execution on Saturday, putting to death dozens of militants linked to Al Qaeda as well as a prominent cleric who had criticized the government’s treatment of the country’s Shiite minority. BAGHDAD — Saudi Arabia drew condemnation from Iran and its allies in the region on Saturday after putting to death a prominent Shiite cleric who had criticized the government’s treatment of its Shiite minority, in a mass execution of 47 men on terrorism-related charges.
Saudi officials said the move sought to deter those committed to violence against the state. But analysts said the grouping of the cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, an outspoken campaigner for Shiite rights, with hardened Qaeda operatives was a threat to domestic dissidents and could further exacerbate sectarian tensions across the Middle East. Saudi officials said the mass execution, one of the largest in the kingdom in decades, was aimed at deterring those committed to violence against the state. But analysts said that the grouping of the cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, with hardened militants was a message to dissidents, and that it could exacerbate sectarian tensions across the Middle East.
The 47 executions, which were reported by the Saudi state news media, were the first of 2016 and followed a year in which at least 157 people were put to death, the most in two decades in the conservative Muslim kingdom. The executions were the first of 2016 and followed a year in which at least 157 people were put to death, the conservative Muslim kingdom’s highest yearly total in two decades.
Sheikh Nimr, who was arrested in 2012, had harshly criticized the Sunni monarchy of neighboring Bahrain for its violent suppression of protests by its own Shiite population after the start of the so-called Arab Spring in 2011. The Saudi government accused him of fueling violent dissent among Saudi Arabia’s Shiites, which he denied. They coincided with increased attacks on Saudi Arabia’s Sunni monarchy by the jihadists of the Islamic State as well as with an escalating rivalry with Shiite Iran that has fueled conflicts in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere.
The executions were carried out at a dozen sites across the kingdom; four involved firing squads, and the rest were beheadings, said Maj. Gen. Mansour Turki, a spokesman for the Saudi Interior Ministry. While most executions in Saudi Arabia are held in public squares, the ones on Saturday were done inside prisons, General Turki said. Many in the region saw the execution of Sheikh Nimr as part of that rivalry, and Shiite leaders in different countries condemned the move. Sheikh Nimr was an outspoken critic of the Saudi monarchy and was adopted as a symbolic leader by Shiite protesters in several Persian Gulf countries during the Arab Spring uprisings.
Iran, a Shiite country and Saudi Arabia’s main regional rival, had warned that executing Sheikh Nimr “would cost Saudi Arabia dearly.” “It is clear that this barren and irresponsible policy will have consequences for those endorsing it, and the Saudi government will have to pay for pursuing this policy,” said Hossein Jaberi-Ansari, a spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry.
A spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, Hossein Jaberi-Ansari, condemned the execution. “It is clear that this barren and irresponsible policy will have consequences for those endorsing it, and the Saudi government will have to pay for pursuing this policy,” he said, according to the Iranian Students News Agency. Criticism also came from Shiite politicians and clerics in Iraq, the Houthi rebel movement in Yemen and the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah, which issued a statement calling Sheikh Nimr’s execution an “assassination” of a man who had “demanded the squandered rights of an oppressed people.”
The cleric’s arrest, in July 2012, came as Saudi Arabia led a group of regional monarchies in violently pushing back against the pro-democratic activism and protests that swept the region during the Arab Spring. Scores of Shiites took to the streets to protest near Sheikh Nimr’s home in eastern Saudi Arabia, and riot police officers in Bahrain fired tear gas at about 100 protesters who carried Sheikh Nimr’s photograph and chanted against the ruling families of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, witnesses said.
The Saudi government’s fears of unrest prompted it to intervene to prop up the monarchy in Bahrain, which faced protests from a Shiite-led pro-democracy movement. In Saudi Arabia, the focal point of protests was in the oil-rich Eastern Province, where many Shiites live and often complain of official discrimination by the Sunni monarchy. But Saudi officials and analysts denied that sectarianism had played any role in the executions.
Sheikh Nimr, based in the Eastern Province town of Awamiyah, had long been a fierce critic of the monarchy, and he played a leading role in the protests. Hundreds of people demonstrated in the province after video footage emerged of his arrest, which showed him bleeding while in custody. The government said he had been wounded in a shootout. Sheikh Nimr faced charges including sedition and was sentenced to death in October 2014. “This means that Saudi Arabia will not hesitate to punish all terrorists,” said Anwar Eshki, a retired major general in the Saudi Army who is the chairman of a research center in Jidda.
The first reports of protests over the execution of Sheikh Nimr came from Bahrain, where about 100 people demonstrated in the Abu Saiba district, west of Manama, the capital, shortly after noon prayers. Riot police officers fired tear gas at demonstrators who chanted against the ruling families of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and held pictures of Sheikh Nimr, according to a witness. The police stepped up patrols throughout the country. When asked about Sheikh Nimr, General Eshki replied: “In Saudi Arabia, there is no difference between the criminals.”
Saudi Arabia has recently faced accusations that its justice system, which is based on a strict interpretation of Shariah law, uses methods similar to those of the Islamic State extremist group. Saudi officials bristle at such comparisons, saying that unlike the Islamic State, which has made a trademark of its grisly videos of executions of captives and members of religious minorities, their government puts to death only people who have been convicted in court of grave crimes. Most of those executed on Saturday had been convicted in connection with a wave of deadly attacks by Al Qaeda in the kingdom about a decade ago, and the Saudi government had appeared in recent weeks to be paving the way for the executions.
Reports that they were imminent had appeared on the websites of Saudi newspapers, and Al Arabiya, a Saudi-owned satellite channel, recently aired a multipart documentary that dramatized the kingdom’s fight against Al Qaeda.
On Saturday, some Saudis, including journalists at a government news conference, thanked their leaders for carrying out the death sentences. The country’s top cleric, Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al Sheikh, called them a “mercy to the prisoners” because the executions would save them from committing more evil acts, The Associated Press reported.
But some Western analysts said that killing Sheikh Nimr along with Qaeda militants sought to conflate his activism with a grave national threat.
“This is indicative of the hard-line tilt the regime has taken,” said Frederic Wehrey, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who has spent time in Shiite parts of Saudi Arabia.
Sheikh Nimr was based in the town of Awamiyah in eastern Saudi Arabia, and had spent years studying in Iran, as is common for Shiite clerics. While he was not prominent in religious circles, his criticisms of the monarchy and calls for Shiite empowerment gained him a following among young Shiites who felt discriminated against by the Saudi state, as well as among their colleagues in neighboring states.
During a sermon in 2012, Sheikh Nimr criticized Prince Naif, who had been interior minister and had recently died, calling him “a man who had spread fear and terror.”
The Saudi authorities arrested Sheikh Nimr in July 2012, while the kingdom was leading a regional push to end the pro-democratic activism and protests that swept the region during the Arab Spring.
The Saudi government’s fears of unrest prompted it to intervene to prop up the Sunni monarchy in Bahrain, which faced protests from a Shiite-led pro-democracy movement. In Saudi Arabia, the focal point of protests was in the oil-rich Eastern Province, where many Shiites live and often complain of official discrimination.
Sheikh Nimr played a leading role in the protests, and hundreds of people demonstrated in the province after video footage emerged of his arrest, which showed him bleeding while in custody. The government said he had been wounded in a shootout. Sheikh Nimr faced charges including sedition and was sentenced to death in October 2014.
Despite his sometimes fiery tone, his supporters and others who followed his career said he had not called for violence.
“To lump this guy with terrorists is a stretch,” Mr. Wehrey said. “To my knowledge, he never called for armed insurrection.”
The executions Saturday came as Saudi Arabia sought to battle accusations that its justice system, based on a strict interpretation of Shariah law, uses methods similar to those of the Islamic State extremist group. Saudi officials bristle at such comparisons, saying that unlike the Islamic State, which has made a trademark of its grisly videos of executions of captives and members of religious minorities, their government puts to death only people who have been convicted in court of grave crimes.
The executions of at least 157 people in 2015, a year that began with the inauguration of a new monarch, King Salman, were a sharp increase from the 90 people put to death in 2014. Saudi officials have argued that the increase, which was strongly criticized by human rights groups, reflected not a change in policy but a backlog of death sentences that had built up in the final years of the previous monarch, King Abdullah.The executions of at least 157 people in 2015, a year that began with the inauguration of a new monarch, King Salman, were a sharp increase from the 90 people put to death in 2014. Saudi officials have argued that the increase, which was strongly criticized by human rights groups, reflected not a change in policy but a backlog of death sentences that had built up in the final years of the previous monarch, King Abdullah.