| New York Times | - |
TEHRAN,
Iran - Iran's top leader on Sunday warned Saudi Arabia of "divine
revenge" over the execution of an opposition Shiite cleric while Riyadh
accused Tehran of supporting terrorism, escalating a war of words hours
after protesters stormed the ...
TEHRAN,
Iran — Iran's top leader on Sunday warned Saudi Arabia of "divine
revenge" over the execution of an opposition Shiite cleric while Riyadh
accused Tehran of supporting terrorism, escalating a war of words hours
after protesters stormed the Saudi Embassy in Tehran.
Saudi
Arabia announced the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr on Saturday along
with 46 others, including three other Shiite dissidents and a number of
al-Qaida militants. It was largest mass execution carried out by the
kingdom in three and a half decades.
Al-Nimr
was a central figure in protests by Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority
until his arrest in 2012, and his execution drew condemnation from
Shiites across the region.
Iran's
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei condemned the execution Sunday in
a statement on his website, saying al-Nimr "neither invited people to
take up arms nor hatched covert plots. The only thing he did was public
criticism." Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard said Saudi Arabia's
"medieval act of savagery" in executing the cleric would lead to the
"downfall" of the country's monarchy.
Saudi
Arabia's Foreign Ministry said that by condemning the execution, Iran
had "revealed its true face represented in support for terrorism."
The
statement, carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, accused Tehran
of "blind sectarianism" and said that "by its defense of terrorist acts"
Iran is a "partner in their crimes in the entire region."
Al-Nimr was convicted of terrorism charges but denied ever advocating violence.
Sunni
Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran are locked in a bitter rivalry, and
support opposite sides in the wars in Syria and Yemen. Iran accuses
Saudi Arabia of supporting "terrorism" in part because it backs Syrian
rebel groups, while Riyadh points to Iran's support for the Lebanese
Hezbollah and other Shiite militant groups in the region.
The
Iranian Foreign Ministry has summoned the Saudi envoy in Tehran to
protest, while the Saudi Foreign Ministry later said it had summoned
Iran's envoy to the kingdom to protest Iran's criticism of the
execution, saying it represented "blatant interference" in its internal
affairs.
In
Tehran, the crowd gathered outside the Saudi Embassy early Sunday and
chanted anti-Saudi slogans. Some protesters threw stones and Molotov
cocktails at the embassy, setting off a fire in part of the building,
said the country's top police official, Gen. Hossein Sajedinia,
according to the semiofficial Tasnim news agency. He later said police
had removed the protesters from the building and arrested some of them,
adding that the situation had been "defused."
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.
Iranian
President Hassan Rouhani, while condemning Saudi Arabia's execution of
al-Nimr, also branded those who attacked the Saudi Embassy as
"extremists."
"It is unjustifiable," he said in a statement.
By
4 p.m., some 400 protesters had gathered in front of the embassy
despite a call by the government for them to protest at a square in
central Tehran. Later, hundreds also gathered at the central square.
Street signs on the street where the Saudi Embassy is located in Tehran
also were replaced with ones bearing the slain sheikh's name. Tehran
authorities could not be immediately reached to discuss the new name.
Protests also took place in Beirut, as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called al-Nimr "the martyr, the holy warrior."
Meanwhile,
Al-Nimr's supporters in eastern Saudi Arabia prepared for three days of
mourning at a mosque in al-Awamiya, some 390 kilometers (240 miles)
northeast from the capital, Riyadh, in the kingdom's al-Qatif region.
However, the sheikh's brother, Mohammed al-Nimr, told The Associated
Press that Saudi officials told his family that the cleric was already
buried in an undisclosed cemetery.
The
cleric's execution could also complicate Saudi Arabia's relationship
with the Shiite-led government in Iraq. The Saudi Embassy in Baghdad is
preparing to formally reopen for the first time in nearly 25 years.
Already on Saturday there were public calls for Prime Minister Haider
al-Abadi to shut the embassy down again.
Al-Abadi
tweeted Saturday night that he was "shocked and saddened" by al-Nimr's
execution, adding that "peaceful opposition is a fundamental right.
Repression does not last."
On
Sunday, Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani,
called al-Nimr a martyr and said his blood and that of other Shiite
protesters "was unjustly and aggressively shed."
Hundreds
of al-Nimr's supporters also protested in his hometown of al-Qatif in
eastern Saudi Arabia, in neighboring Bahrain where police fired tear gas
and bird shot, and as far away as northern India.
The
last time Saudi Arabia carried out a mass execution on this scale was
in 1980, when the kingdom executed 63 people convicted over the 1979
seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Islam's holiest city. Extremists
held the mosque, home to the cube-shaped Kaaba toward which Muslims
around the world pray, for two weeks as they demanded the royal family
abdicate the throne.
Also
Sunday, the BBC reported that one of the 47 executed in Saudi Arabia,
Adel al-Dhubaiti, was convicted over a 2004 attack on its journalists in
Riyadh. That attack by a gang outside of the home of a suspected
al-Qaida militant killed 36-year-old Irish cameraman Simon Cumbers.
British reporter Frank Gardner, now the BBC's security correspondent,
was seriously wounded in the attack and paralyzed, but survived.
___
Gambrell
reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers
Joseph Krauss and Maamoun Youssef in Cairo and Sinan Salaheddin in
Baghdad contributed to this report.
___
Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellap .
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