The consequences of Saudi Arabia’s mass execution of 47 people will be felt far beyond its Eastern Province, which was home to Nimr al-Nimr, the leading Shia Muslim cleric who was the most prominent figure among those to die.
Unlike many of the Sunni Muslims executed for alleged complicity in al-Qaida terrorism, Nimr was an advocate of non-violent resistance to the unelected Saudi regime. He was arrested in 2012 for criticising the royal family.His plight reflected the trials and tribulations of Saudi Arabia’s Shia minority, which accounts for 15% of the country’s 29 million people and has suffered, historically, from institutionalised discrimination and periodic security crackdowns.
The al-Qatif governorate of Eastern Province, bordering the Gulf, has been the setting for anti-regime agitation since at least 1979, when Saudi Shias demonstrated in support of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, whose Islamic revolution in Iran that year toppled the shah. Trouble erupted again in 2011-13, triggered by the Arab Spring uprising of the Shia majority in nearby Bahrain and its subsequent brutal, Saudi-assisted suppression.
This time last year there were protests in Nimr’s home town, al-Awamiyah, over the killing of four men in a raid by security forces. The authorities said the dead were terrorists but residents said the random shootings were typical of continuing official attempts to deny Shia rights and freedoms.
Nimr’s imprisonment and the prospect of mass executions brought calls in Britain and elsewhere for clemency, amid claims by Human Rights Watch campaignersthat the trials of the suspects were deeply unjust.
Nimr’s case also became a cause celebre across the Shia world, framed in geopolitical as well as humanitarian terms. His fate was linked to the broader, region-wide struggle for power and influence between the Sunni sphere, championed by the House of Saud, on the one hand, and the theocrats of Iran, the most powerful majority Shia state, on the other. Iran repeatedly demanded Nimr’s release, warning Riyadh in October, when his death sentence was confirmed, that executing him would place a “heavy price on Saudi Arabia”.
Until the last moment, King Salman, the Saudi monarch, had the power to commute Nimr’s sentence or issue a pardon. He did neither. Instead, the executions went ahead, apparently timed to coincide with the western New Year holiday break, when public attention might be expected to be distracted. Some of those executed were shot by firing squad, others were beheaded, in a total of 12 different locations. The bodies of some of the accused were hung from gibbets in public, the most severe form of punishment under Saudi-administered sharia law and similar to crucifixion. It was not immediately known whether Nimr was among them.
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