Reformist Cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr Among 47 Executed by Saudi Arabia

[Fuddnik]

Source: AP via NBCNews.com

Reformist Cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr Among 47 Executed by Saudi Arabia

by The Associated Press

Saudi Arabia said Saturday it has executed 47 prisoners, including reformist Shiite cleric and activist Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

Al-Nimr was a central figure in Shiite protests that erupted in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring, and carrying out his execution may spark new unrest among the OPEC powerhouse's Shiite minority.

Saudi Arabia said Saturday it has executed 47 prisoners, including reformist Shiite cleric and activist Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. Al-Nimr was a central figure in Shiite protests that erupted in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring, and carrying out his execution may spark new unrest among the OPEC powerhouse's Shiite minority.

The cleric's name was among a list of the 47 carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency. It cited the Interior Ministry for the information. Saudi state television also reported the executions.
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Related: Crucifixion Sentence in Saudi Arabia Sparks Outcry

Saudi Arabia carried out at least 157 executions in 2015, with beheadings reaching their highest level in the kingdom in two decades, according to several advocacy groups that monitor the death penalty worldwide.

His 17-year-old nephew was sentenced to crucifixion earlier this year.


Read more: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/reformist-cleric-sheikh-nimr-al-nimr-among-47-executed-saudi-n489116

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Who has beheaded more people this year? ISIS or our good allies in Saudi Arabia?

[MADem]

1. Daesh (Isis) has killed more people, easily, using a variety of methods.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/17/world/mapping-isis-attacks-around-the-world/

[rjsquirrel]

4. Whoops facts!

This is DU. We never let true facts get in the way of rhetorical flourishes that render the world as we wish to see it (see the way some BS fans "unskew" the polls they don't liked for example).

It's a habit on the right. Now it's all over on the left. The truth is whatever fits my argument du jour.

[Enthusiast]

11. CNN is not a credible source.

[MADem]

39. Try and do the best you can with it....

[CJCRANE]

13. Who's backing Isis?

[oberliner]

18. "Who has beheaded more people this year? ISIS or our good allies in Saudi Arabia?"

That was the question posed in the OP.

The answer is ISIS - and it's not close.

[CJCRANE]

19. Is ISIS a separate entity? Who is backing them?

[oberliner]

23. Yes, ISIS is a separate entity

There are wealthy individuals from a number of countries (including Saudi Arabia) who provide financial support to ISIS.

The government of Saudi Arabia, however, does not directly fund ISIS.

[CJCRANE]

27. A DIA memo in 2012 stated that the regional powers supported a "salafist principality"

being set up.

[DhhD]

35. Correct. A Salafist Principality of Wahhabism.

https://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=AwrSbgYJ9odWPpsAYNql87UF;_ylc=X1MDOTU4MTA0NjkEX3IDMgRmcgMEZ3ByaWQDNG56bm5jVTJTZE9yTlFKSTlTclhEQQRuX3JzbHQDMARuX3N1Z2cDMTAEb3JpZ2luA3NlYXJjaC55YWhvby5jb20EcG9zAzEEcHFzdHIDV2FoaARwcXN0cmwDNARxc3RybAM5BHF1ZXJ5A3dhaGhhYmlzbQR0X3N0bXADMTQ1MTc1MDkxMg--?p=wahhabism&fr=sfp&fr2=sa-gp-search&iscqry=

[trillion]

60. Isis is being funded by members of the Saudi Royal family. Google it.

[MADem]

40. Not me!

I'll bet Google would help with that question, though.

[Jack Rabbit]

53. My, let's argue about whether ISIS or the Sauds are bloodier

Who was a worse president: Gee Dubya Frat Boy or (fill in the blank).

[Snarkoleptic]

20. And police in America killed 1,134 people in 2015, averaging over 3/day.

I know there are violent criminals out there and police need to protect themselves and the public, but they are 'protecting and serving' way too many people to death.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database#

details-
http://killedbypolice.net/

[oberliner]

24. Not exactly the same as mass executions of political undesirables by the state

Hopefully you would agree that such a comparison is not really fair.

[Snarkoleptic]

25. Of course it's not an apples-to-apples, but...

the fascist police state often has a hair trigger for 'undesirables' of all stripes.

Plus, aren't we supposed to be a beacon of freedom (or something)?
The juxtaposition of our own slaughter vs. theirs is stunning in this context.

[oberliner]

30. Reasonable point

Both issues need to be addressed for sure.

[EX500rider]

33. Of course that's out of around 30,000 people arrested every day...

[MADem]

38. I didn't realize it was a contest....

Can't we discuss any issue without the obligatory "Well, in AMERICA, they do X?"

We're not quite cutting off heads in the public square. Sure we have work to do, but I think I'll take my chances here, killer cops notwithstanding. I think, as a percentage of the population, the odds are better on this end.

[trillion]

61. Meanwhile over 3000 people drowned alone in 2015 fleeing ISIS to Europe.

[Blue_Tires]

65. We're not allowed to mention that

nor the number of dissidents and civilians Assad has had executed, Russia's ever-dwindling media and online privacy rights, etc. etc.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

2. Keeping in mind how much the Saudis own of the Stock Market....

And FOX "News".

[Enthusiast]

10. How is it the Republican Trump supporters do not know about the Saudi interest in Fox?

Maybe they think the Saudis are the "good Muslims". No, that can't be, they think the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

42. The Saudis are also the actual "Arabs" they use like a racial slur too.

[Enthusiast]

44. True. Many reasons for Republicans to mistrust Fox "News".

[Bad Dog]

3. Backing the wrong horse

Saudi oil means they can get away with whatever they want. Saudis were behind 9/11 and they export the toxic Wahhabist brand of Islam to Mosques throughout the World which promotes intolerance and terrorism. IS would not even exist were it not for the money coming from the Gulf states.

[rjsquirrel]

5. Right!

We should have backed Iran!

I kid.

[Bad Dog]

6. Iranians are the most pro US people in the ME after Israel

The CIA and MI6 instigated a coup in Iran which deposed a democratically elected government and installed a vicious dictator. It's quite understandable that the Iranians would want some form of payback after said dictator fell. That was over 30 years ago. A more pragmatic approach is better than brooding over historic grievances.

[oberliner]

21. Iran’s ‘staggering’ execution spree: nearly 700 put to death in just over six months

The Iranian authorities are believed to have executed an astonishing 694 people between 1 January and 15 July 2015, said Amnesty International today, in an unprecedented spike in executions in the country.

This is equivalent to executing more than three people per day. At this shocking pace, Iran is set to surpass the total number of executions in the country recorded by Amnesty International for the whole of last year.

“Iran’s staggering execution toll for the first half of this year paints a sinister picture of the machinery of the state carrying out premeditated, judicially-sanctioned killings on a mass scale,” said Said Boumedouha, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme.

“If Iran’s authorities maintain this horrifying execution rate we are likely to see more than 1,000 state-sanctioned deaths by the year’s end.”

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/07/irans-staggering-execution-spree/

[Enthusiast]

45. I feel certain they deserved it.

I kid.

[trillion]

62. Please clarify

[haikugal]

31. I'm not so sure about Israel....

[Ed Suspicious]

7. We should have.

[betterdemsonly]

14. Not true. Iraqis and Iranians both have as much oil

yet we still agitate for war against those two states, successfully in the case of Iraq.

[Enthusiast]

8. What is so much better about Saudi Arabia than Saddam Hussein's Iraq?

Absolutely nothing! Say it again!

[oberliner]

22. Attempted extermination of the Kurds?

Al-Anfal Campaign:

In 1988, the Hussein regime began a campaign of extermination against the Kurdish people living in Northern Iraq. This is known as the Anfal campaign. The attacks resulted in the death of at least 182,000 people, many of them women and children. A team of Human Rights Watch investigators determined, after analyzing eighteen tons of captured Iraqi documents, testing soil samples and carrying out interviews with more than 350 witnesses, that the attacks on the Kurdish people were characterized by gross violations of human rights, including mass executions and disappearances of many tens of thousands of noncombatants, widespread use of chemical weapons including Sarin, mustard gas and nerve agents that killed thousands, the arbitrary imprisoning of tens of thousands of women, children, and elderly people for months in conditions of extreme deprivation, forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of villagers after the demolition of their homes, and the wholesale destruction of nearly two thousand villages along with their schools, mosques, farms and power stations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Saddam_Hussein%27s_Iraq

[Enthusiast]

26. That has been well documented.

Saudi atrocities have been less well documented. All because the USA wants the Saddam atrocities to be the focus and more well known. That doesn't make them any less real. How many Saudis hijackers were there on 9/11?

[oberliner]

29. Saddam Hussein was a brutal, genocidal dictator

The Saudi leadership is pretty damn awful as well.

I do agree with you that the US can shine a light on the atrocities it wishes to focus on and ignore others - which is very hypocritical.

Our "partnership" with Saudi Arabia definitely has an ugly side to it, to say the least.

But that is part of the whole argument (which seems to be popular these days) - how it's better to work with relatively stable dictators than deal with what might happen should those dictators be deposed.

[CJCRANE]

28. That role is Erdogan's now. He says he wants to be the new Hitler.

[EX500rider]

34. Get back to us when Saudi starts gassing entire towns from the air.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

43. Pssst....

"Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town ... The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target," he wrote.

The former CIA official revealed that immediately after the battle the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report that said it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds.

Both sides used gas at Halabja, Pelletiere suggested.

"The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent — that is, a cyanide-based gas — which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time."

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1779.htm

[Enthusiast]

46. Do not inject reason into this argument!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

47. I guess I don't have to dig up the same findings from the US Army War College....

We can all go back to gassing each other.

[Enthusiast]

48. At least let us use mustard gas! I like mustard!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

49. Beer gas is deadlier.

[EX500rider]

51. "Do not inject reason into this argument!"

Don't worry, they didn't.

[EX500rider]

50. Pssst...it was the Iraqi's

Even the Iraqis say it was them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_chemical_attack


The Halabja attack has been recognized as a separate event from the Anfal Genocide that was also conducted against the Kurdish people by the Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi High Criminal Court recognized the Halabja massacre as an act of genocide on March 1, 2010, a decision welcomed by the Kurdistan Regional Government. The attack was also condemned as a crime against humanity by the Parliament of Canada.

Even the General who ordered it didn't deny it, so, nice try but no sale.

Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid (who commanded Iraqi forces in northern Iraq during that period, which earned him a nickname of 'Chemical Ali') was condemned to death by hanging by an Iraqi court in January 2010, after being found guilty of orchestrating the Halabja massacre.
Al-Majid did not express remorse at his trials, stating his actions were in the interests of Iraqi security. He was executed by hanging on January 25, 2010

[Spitfire of ATJ]

54. Two words: Plea Deal.

[EX500rider]

55. Plea deal on a man they executed? Seems unlikely..

[Spitfire of ATJ]

56. I wouldn't be surprised if they TORTURED a confession out of them....

Seems like there is a HUGE effort to justify right-wing crap.

Especially the idea that Saddam "gassed his own people".

[EX500rider]

57. Hardly right wing crap to believe the truth.

Again, Ali Hassan al-Majid admitted it at his own trial....you really think the Iraqi's would have a problem pinning it on the Iranian's if they could?
Was the Iraqi High Criminal Court also "tortured" to say the Iraqi's did it? lol

[Spitfire of ATJ]

58. I suspect the entire Iraqi government of being a puppet....

Report Suppressed: Iran Gassed Kurds, Not Iraq

US Army War College (USAWC) undertook a study of the use of chemical weapons by Iran and Iraq in order to better understand battlefield chemical warfare. They concluded that it was Iran and not Iraq that killed the Kurds.

by Raju Thomas

Times of India, 16 September 2002: The repeated American propaganda weapon to rationalise the deaths of more than one million innocent Iraqis since 1991 through economic sanctions is that Saddam Hussein used poison gas against Iranians during the Iran-Iraq war and against Iraq’s own Kurdish citizens. The accusation is now being invoked to launch a full-scale American assault on Iraq. This claim of Iraq gassing its own citizens at Halabjah is suspect. First, both Iran and Iraq used chemical weapons against each other during their war. Second, at the termination of the Iran-Iraq war, professors Stephen Pelletiere and Leif Rosenberger, and Lt Colonel Douglas Johnson of the US Army War College (USAWC) undertook a study of the use of chemical weapons by Iran and Iraq in order to better understand battlefield chemical warfare. They concluded that it was Iran and not Iraq that killed the Kurds.
In the first report they wrote: “In September 1988 — a month after the war had ended...the state department abruptly, and in what many viewed as sensational manner, condemned Iraq for allegedly using chemical weapons against its Kurdish population...with the result that numerous Kurdish civilians were killed. The Iraqi government denied that any such gassing had occurred...Having looked at all the evidence that was available to us, we find it impossible to confirm the state department’s claim that gas was used in this instance. To begin with there were never any victims produced. International relief organisations who examined the Kurds — in Turkey where they had gone for asylum — failed to discover any. Nor were there any found inside Iraq. The claim rests solely on testimony of the Kurds who had crossed the border into Turkey, where they were interviewed by staffers of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5257.htm

[EX500rider]

63. To bad all your sources are the same web site from 2002..

....since then much more has come to light regarding Iraq after the 2003 invasion. In 2002 the USAWC probably still believed Iraq was still manufacturing WMD's too. And if Iraq was such a US puppet they wouldn't have kicked our troops out and they wouldn't let the Iranian's in to fight ISIL. So again, no sale.

Most of the details about the Halabja killings only emerged a few days later. Reports from the city suggested that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's forces had launched the chemical gas attack.
Figures for the final total of dead range from 3,200 people to 5,000.
Between 7,000 and 10,000 are believed to have been injured in the massacre, which became known as "Bloody Friday".
Initially, the US Defence Intelligence Agency blamed Iran for the attack. Halabja is around eight to 10 miles (14km to 16km) from the Iranian border.
However, the majority of evidence indicates that the gas attack was an Iraqi assault against Iranian forces, pro-Iranian Kurdish forces and Halabja's citizens during a major battle.
Although there is some evidence Saddam Hussein's forces had used chemical agents before this date, the attack on Halabja is thought to be the first documented assault using chemicals.
Saddam Hussein's deputy - Ali Hassan al-Majid, or "Chemical Ali" - who is on trial charged with crimes against humanity over a campaign against Kurds in the 1980s
He is one of six defendants facing charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity during the so-called Anfal campaign that killed an estimated 100,000 people.
The tribunal dropped charges against the seventh co-defendant, Saddam Hussein himself, when he was executed on 30 December 2006 after being convicted in a separate case.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/16/newsid_4304000/4304853.stm

I'll take the BBC current story over the Times of India's story from 2002.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

64. The "gassed his own people" to counter Liberal outrage of the invasion is the talking point....

And I still don't buy it as everything was twisted to fit the policy. To me it's like when Republicans claim the Clintons murdered Vince Foster.

I see Saddam as a guy who was trying to get the sanctions lifted to rebuild his country. He was an old man ruling over a nation of women, children and old people. The electrical grid was held together with chewing gum and bailing wire.

Even his "Elite Republican Guard" was an exaggeration.

We didn't invade to bring him to justice for the Kurds.

The first place we rushed in to guard was the Oil Ministry while a FOX "News" guy was busted trying to smuggle out museum pieces.

[Live and Learn]

9. 'A man is known by his friends.' Why the heck are they our allies?

I know follow the money.

[SmittynMo]

12. Yeah, I don't get it either

Weren't the 9/11 terrorists from Saudi Arabia? And now we approve of these assassinations? The whole damn country is pretty ruthless.

Can someone explain to us why they are still our allies?

[Bad Dog]

16. Breakup of Ottoman Empire

Britain made sure that its oil supplies would be safeguarded following the breakup of the Ottoman empire by ensuring despotic monarchies were kept in place. Let's face it, Kuwait is only a country because it's slap bang on top of a shedload of oil. We appeal to the despot's vanity, allow them to come over here to live a life of sybaritic debauchery while they allow the Wahhabists with their culture police keep the ordinary people in check, all the time claiming to be virtuous and holy.

And they buy a lot of weapons too.

[DhhD]

37. Good question as the US has so much oil and gas that the Congress, two weeks ago, changed

the law so domestic oil and liquefied gas can now be exported out of the US in any form. America does not need ME oil. Wind and solar energy fields could make up the 5% difference in oil imported from Saudi Arabia. We have been helping to clear out the Sunnis and Shiite from the Levant so Wahhabist can take over. I see Isreal on the West, Saud in the Center and Iran on the East, as a final settlement by or as late as 2053; 2003-2053. It seems that the MIC is needing a new round of warring contracts. Big Bullet supplies are just about gone.

[raouldukelives]

17. Yep. Some think climate change and terrorism should be fought.

And some invest in assuring more of the same.

[betterdemsonly]

15. They aren't different entities. n/t

[lark]

32. Saudi Arabia is indeed one of the enemies.

But they have bribed our country to look the other way. They are the main exporters of terrorism with their Wahhabaism (sp?) state religion and almost all the terrorists from 9/11 were Saudi Arabian, some even supported by the royals. They are big supporters of ISIS, as both are Sunnis. Notice ISIS attacking that country - NO, and there's a good reason why not.

[Myrddin]

36. For information: a good source of info

http://www.arabnews.com/saudi-arabia/news/859176

It's a mouthpiece for the Saudi establishment, but they tend to be almost boastful of their authoritarian habits.

Their comments sections can be an eye opener too.

[roamer65]

41. This will just fuel the Shi'a uprising in the Eastern province.

No doubt Iran will now fully fund it as well.

[47of74]

52. Our Allies, Ladies and Gentlemen.

[trillion]

59. So sorry to hear. I wonder if they killed the poet who was sentenced for being disrespectful to

Mohammed and the 17 yo. Very sad. They were supposed to be beheaded and then hung upside down on a cross for days.

This event is the real Saudi Arabia (with spot lights) showing exactly what it is. They are the funders of ISIS and Bokoharam.