English
Shia Islamic leaders on Sunday have stepped up their condemnation of the Saudi execution of the prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, urging a robust response from Riyadh’s western backers, who are yet to fully address the issue.
David Gauke, financial secretary to the Treasury, became the most senior UK figure to react to the execution, which has led to clashes in Tehran, and prompted widespread denunciation elsewhere. He said Nimr’s death was a “worrying development”. The US Department of State had said earlier that the move risked “exacerbating sectarian tensions at a time when they urgently need to be reduced”.
Anger remained palpable on the streets of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, and in Bahrain and Baghdad, hours after the Saudi embassy in Tehran was torched by protesters angered by the execution of a senior cleric who had been championed by Iranian leaders.
However, in what appeared to be a move to calm tensions, the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, said the attack on the embassy was unjustifiable, and urged that the perpetrators be dealt with.
“I have no doubt that the Saudi government has damaged its image, more than before, among the countries in the world – in particular [among] Islamic countries –by this un-Islamic act,” Rouhani said.
Taking a cautionary tone, he added Iran “will not allow rogue elements” to use the incident and “carry out illegal actions that damage the dignity of the Islamic republic establishment”.
“I call on the interior minister to identify the perpetrators of this attack with firm determination and introduce them to the judiciary … so that there will be an end to such appalling actions once and for all.”
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called on Saudi Arabia’s western backers to directly condemn the execution, which came three years after Nimr was arrested following his vocal support for anti-government protests in Bahrain and Riyadh.
“This oppressed cleric did not encourage people to join an armed movement, nor did he engage in secret plotting, and he only voiced public criticism … based on religious fervour,” said Khamenei, who criticised “the silence of the supposed backers of freedom, democracy and human rights” over the execution.
“Why are those who claim to support human rights quiet? Why do those who claim to back freedom and democracy support this government?”
Pressed on the development, Gauke repeated a government line that Riyadh had passed on information that had been critical to stopping terrorist plots in the UK. “We have a relationship with Saudi Arabia where we are able to speak candidly to them, where these issues are raised on a regular basis by the foreign secretary and the prime minister and our representatives in Riyadh.
“We are able to have that relationship where we can tell them what we think and, clearly it is a worrying development, what we have heard from Saudi Arabia in the last few days.”
Riyadh, meanwhile, stuck to its position that Nimr had committed acts of terrorism. He had been executed along with 46 others accused of terrorism in the early hours of the new year, many of whom had been convicted for bombings or assassinations. One of those executed had allegedly been part of a team of gunmen who had shot the BBC correspondent Frank Gardner on the streets of Riyadh, leaving him paralysed.
Nimr’s execution could have been stopped by royal pardon, and clemency had been repeatedly sought by officials in Tehran. However, in a sign of Riyadh’s hardening position towards its arch regional rival, the Saudi monarch, King Salman, refused to intervene.
Saudi officials had been convinced that Nimr was a central figure in attempts to stir dissent among the country’s Shia minority, which accounts for around 15% of the population and is viewed by Riyadh as a subversive threat, urged on by the Iranian leadership.
The move also reflects widely divergent positions on broader conflicts in Syria, where both Iran and Saudi Arabia have been fighting a proxy war, and in Yemen, where the Saudi military has been fighting against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. Both sides also have strong stakes in the political futures of Lebanon and Bahrain, and to a lesser extent in Baghdad, where Riyadh opened an embassy last week for the first time in more than a decade.
Source: www.theguardian.com