We executed 47 terrorists, not ordinary criminals – Saudi govt

                             

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia yesterday said that the 47 persons her officials executed last week were not ordinary criminals but individuals found guilty of plotting terror attacks in the Holy Land. Riyadh said it was not pleased with the barrage of criticisms that trailed the execution exercise even as it insisted that all the 47 including Shiite’s famous cleric, Nimr Baqeer Ameen Al Nimr, are terrorists and not ordinary criminals.

This was contained in a statement signed by the Kingdom and obtained through the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Abuja. The statement clarified that about 95 per cent of those executed were not Shiites but Sunnis, asking the international community and other commentators to desist from the ill-informed assumption that “Saudi killed Shiites because of their differences of beliefs”.

The statement reads in part: “The government of Saudi Arabia is strongly opposed to the condemnation and protestations on the attacks it is enduring from people who are least abreast with the Islamic jurisprudence practiced in our kingdom, which says, Allah Almighty says in the Holy Quran that the recompense of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and do mischief in the land is only that they shall be killed or crucified or their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or be exiled from the land. That is their disgrace in this world and a great torment is theirs in the hereafter.”

“The perpetrators were involved in a score of terrorist attacks which resulted in the death of innocent lives and destruction of private, public and military properties including, Al Hamra Housing Complex, in Riyadh, storming the complex of the APICORP, the Arabian Company of Petroleum Investment or an equivalent of NNPC, poisoning and sabotaging public water supply, kidnapping members of the public with the intention of mutilating their bodies or killing them, manufacturing and smuggling explosives into the kingdom and planning to damage the national economy as well as endangering the lives of the nation’s security personnel, foreign embassies, Saudi ARAMCO and several petroleum facilities of the kingdom”.The statement further said that the slain terror suspects had initiated several robbery activities on banks and shops and committed a number of frauds.

Credit: today.ng