{"id":1325,"date":"2016-01-03T18:02:31","date_gmt":"2016-01-04T00:02:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/?p=1325"},"modified":"2016-01-30T03:32:05","modified_gmt":"2016-01-30T09:32:05","slug":"saudi-arabia-executes-47-people-including-top-shiite-cleric","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/03\/saudi-arabia-executes-47-people-including-top-shiite-cleric\/","title":{"rendered":"Saudi Arabia executes 47 people, including top Shiite cleric"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Part-NIC-Nic6526171-1-1-0\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia executed 47 people on Saturday, including a prominent Shiite cleric behind anti-government protests and Sunnis convicted of involvement in deadly al-Qaida attacks, the government said.<\/p>\n

The 56-year-old cleric, Nimr al-Nimr, was a driving force of the protests that broke out in 2011 in the Sunni-ruled kingdom\u2019s east, where the Shiite minority complains of marginalisation.<\/p>\n

But the list does not include Nimr\u2019s nephew, Ali al-Nimr, whose arrest at the age of 17 and alleged torture during detention sparked condemnation from human rights groups and the United States.<\/p>\n

Announcing the executions, the Saudi interior ministry said the 47 had been convicted of adopting the radical \u201ctakfiri\u201d ideology, joining \u201cterrorist organisations\u201d and implementing various \u201ccriminal plots\u201d.<\/p>\n

The list, published in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency, includes Sunnis convicted of involvement in Al-Qaeda attacks that killed Saudis and foreigners in the kingdom in 2003 and 2004.<\/p>\n

All of the executed were Saudis, except for an Egyptian and citizen of Chad.<\/p>\n

The list includes Fares al-Shuwail which Saudi media outlets have described as the top religious leader of al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia. He was arrested in August 2004.<\/p>\n

They were executed Saturday in 12 Saudi cities, the ministry said, without elaborating.<\/p>\n

Saudi executions are usually carried out by beheading with a sword.<\/p>\n

Executions have soared in the country since King Salman acceded the throne in January 2015, after the death of king Abdullah.<\/p>\n

Last year, Saudi Arabia executed 153 people convicted of various crimes, including drug-trafficking, after 87 were put to death in 2014.<\/p>\n

Authorities in the kingdom set up specialised courts in 2011 to try dozens of Saudis and foreigners accused of belonging to al-Qaida or of participating in the wave of attacks that swept the country from 2003.<\/p>\n

Those shootings and bombings killed more than 150 Saudis and foreigners.<\/p>\n

The kingdom\u2019s current Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef oversaw a crackdown on the militants at the time.<\/p>\n

In 2009, al-Qaida announced a merger of its Saudi and Yemeni branches forming al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)\u2014classified by the United States as the network\u2019s deadliest branch.<\/p>\n

But Nimr was arrested for completely different reasons in 2012.<\/p>\n

The interior ministry had described him at the time as an \u201cinstigator of sedition\u201d as it announced his arrest in the Shiite village of Awamiya in the east after being wounded in the leg while putting up resistance.<\/p>\n

A video published on YouTube in 2012 showed Nimr, a slightly built man with a white beard, making a speech celebrating the 2012 death of then-interior minister Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz, the crown prince\u2019s father.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet the worms eat him,\u201d Nimr said at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose who killed our sons and jailed them, how would we not be happy for their deaths\u2026 May God take their lives one after the other, the families of Al-Saud and Al-Khalifa,\u201d he said in reference to the Sunni ruling families of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia\u2019s Shiite-populated east has been the scene of periodic clashes involving security forces after demonstrations broke out almost five years ago alongside a Shiite-led protest movement in neighboring Bahrain.<\/p>\n

Most of Saudi Arabia\u2019s Shiites live in the oil-rich east, where many say they are marginalised. <\/p>\n

Photo: AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saudi Arabia executed 47 people on Saturday, including a prominent Shiite cleric behind anti-government protests and Sunnis convicted of involvement in deadly al-Qaida attacks, the government said. The 56-year-old cleric, Nimr al-Nimr, was a driving force of the protests that broke out in 2011 in the Sunni-ruled kingdom\u2019s east, where the Shiite minority complains of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1462,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1325"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1463,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325\/revisions\/1463"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}