by Saudi Arabia on Saturday, triggering an angry response from across the Shiite world, including the kingdom’s archenemy, Iran.The official Saudi Press Agency listed Nimr’s name among 47 people who were executed on Saturday morning in the capital Riyadh and 12 other cities. Some were beheaded, others were killed by firing squads, according to Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry. Nimr, 56, was a key figure in the protests that erupted among Sunni Saudi Arabia’s Shiite minority in 2011, inspired by the Arab spring revolts elsewhere in the region.
The execution risks stirring renewed unrest among Shiites in the kingdom, and drew an immediate harsh response from Iran, which has warned in the past that carrying out the death sentence on Nimr could cost Saudi Arabia dearly.
It could also ignite unrest in neighboring Bahrain, where widespread protests among the country’s Shiite majority against the Sunni royal family were quelled by Saudi military intervention in 2011. Police in Bahrain fired tear gas to disperse several dozen people who took to the streets to protest the execution in a village west of the capital Manama, Reuters reported, citing eyewitnesses.
Nimr was arrested by Saudi security forces in 2012, after being shot in the legs during a car chase in the mostly Shiite eastern province of Qatif, where the protests had been concentrated.He had been charged with “instigating unrest and undermining the kingdom’s security,” as well as delivering speeches against the government and defending political prisoners.
Most of the 47 executed on Saturday had been convicted for participating in Al Qaeda related attacks in the past decade, the Associated Press said. Two were citizens of Egypt and Chad, and the rest were Saudi nationals.