Saudi Arabia’s execution of a leading cleric from the Shia minority drew warnings of a backlash against the ruling Al Saud family and threatened to further intensify a wave of sectarian conflict in th
Saudi Arabia’s execution of a leading cleric from the Shia minority drew warnings of a backlash against the ruling Al Saud family and threatened to further intensify a wave of sectarian conflict in the region.
The execution of prominent Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimra in Saudi Arabia on Saturday could arouse anger among the minority’s youths, his brother warned, while calling for calm.
“We reject violence and clashing with authorities, just like the martyr sheikh rejected it.”
“We were expecting and hoping for wisdom and a political solution to prevail.
Lebanon’s Supreme Islamic Shia Council called the execution of cleric Nimr al-Nimra a “grave mistake”, and the Hezbollah group termed it an assassination. Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, an establishment cleric in largely Shia rival Iran, said repercussions against the Sunni Saudi rulers would “wipe them from the pages of history”.
“The execution of Sheikh Nimr was an execution of reason, moderation and dialogue,” the council’s vice-president Sheikh Abdel Amir Qabalan said in a statement.
Iran warned Riyadh would pay a “high price”.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari strongly condemned Nimr’s execution despite repeated Iranian requests for clemency.
Legislators in Shia-majority Iraq called on the government to sever ties with neighbouring Saudi Arabia, just one day after the kingdom reopened its embassy in Baghdad for the first time since 1990.
Scores of Shia in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province marched through Nimr’s home district of Qatif shouting “down with the Al Saud”, and dozens more gathered in nearby Bahrain, a Sunni-ruled island kingdom allied to Saudi Arabia. The Bahrain police fired tear gas at several dozen people protesting the execution by Saudi Arabia on Saturday of a prominent Saudi Shia cleric, an eyewitness said.
Demonstrators carrying pictures of the cleric faced security forces in a stand-off in a Shia Muslim village of Abu-Saiba, west of the capital Manama.
Shia leaders in Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Yemen also warned of reprisals, in a signal that sectarian conflicts across West Asia could be further inflamed. Yemen’s Houthis said Nimr had been afforded only a “mock trial”.
