Agencies
A Saudi court sentenced one person to death and 21 others to various jail sentences after they were convicted of a range of militant crimes, including setting up training camps and identifying oil locations to hit, state news agency SPA said yesterday.
Riyadh’s concern about Islamist militants has increased over the past two years as conflicts in Syria and Iraq have attracted more of its own citizens to travel there to join groups fighting in the name of jihad.
Of the 22 people convicted, the man sentenced to death was a citizen of Chad, SPA said. The rest, which included another Chadian and someone described as Bengali, were given prison sentences of between five and 28 years.
The group was convicted of embracing militant ideology, the possession of ammunition in their apartment and firing on security services during a raid on their apartment in Makkah, killing one security officer.
In February, King Abdullah decreed long prison terms for those who travel abroad to fight or who give material or moral support to groups deemed “extremist”, including Al Qaeda, Syria’s Al Nusra Front and Islamic State.
The kingdom has detained thousands of its own citizens and sentenced hundreds to jail after a campaign of bombings and attacks in the last decade by militants.
The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdulaziz Al al-Sheikh, the highest religious authority in the kingdom, has described Al Qaeda and Islamic State and the ideology they represent as the biggest enemy of Islam.
•A Saudi court yesterday sentenced prominent Shia cleric and anti-government protest leader Nimr al-Nimr to death after convicting him of sedition, his family said.
Nimr was a driving force behind demonstrations that erupted in 2011 in the east, alongside a Shia-led protest movement in Bahrain.
He was found guilty of “disobeying” the kingdom’s rulers and taking up arms against security forces, his brother said.
Heroin smuggler beheaded
Saudi Arabia yesterday beheaded a Pakistani man, the interior ministry said, bringing to almost 60 the number of executions in the kingdom this year.
Mohamed Yunus Mohamed Shoaib, executed in the Eastern Province community of Qatif, “was caught smuggling a large quantity of heroin into the kingdom inside his gut”, the ministry said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.
His decapitation takes to 57 the number of people executed in the nation this year, compared with 78 people in all of 2013, according to an AFP count.
On Tuesday a Saudi, Hamad bin Awadh bin Hawi al-Anzi, was executed in northern Jawf region “because he smuggled a large quantity of amphetamine pills into the kingdom”, SPA said.
The interior ministry said the government “is keen on combating narcotics due to their great harm to individuals and the society”.