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2016: Nimr al-Nimr, Shiite cleric

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On this date in 2016, Saudi Arabia beheaded Shiite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr (familiarly known as Sheikh Nimr) — one of 47 executions carried out in 12 cities throughout the kingdom that included at least four political prisoners (one of them al-Nimr) as well as two foreign nationals.

A prominent dissident who became an emblem of resistance in his predominantly Shiite province of Al-Awamiyah*, al-Nimr had been arrested several times before without blunting his sharp tongue. “People must rejoice at his death,” he offered in June 2012, about the death of militant Wahhabist crown prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud. “He will be eaten by worms and will suffer the torments of Hell in his grave.”

But here in the terrestrial sphere, Nayef’s death made Salman the crown prince … and queued up Salman’s son, Mohammad bin Salman to become the de facto ruler of the kingdom.

Al-Nimr was seized in July 2012, during crackdowns** on the 2011-2012 “Arab Spring” protests — shot in the leg during the course of his arrest and beaten bloody by his captors. This arrest itself brought thousands into the streets, at least two of whom were shot dead in their own turn as al-Nimr went on hunger strike. By the time al-Nimr was put up on charges in 2014, the aforementioned Mohammad bin Salman — “MbS” of dread popular parlance, infamous for his bonesaws — was well along his rise to power in Saudi Arabia as the hand and the heir who transacted the business of a dementia-addled prince.

Al-Nimr’s October 2014 death sentence for “seeking ‘foreign meddling’ in the kingdom, ‘disobeying’ its rulers and taking up arms against the security forces” drew worldwide condemnation and protests over the ensuing year, a year coinciding with MbS’s overt conquest of political power in Saudi Arabia.

The execution sparked global outrage of varying hues, most sharply from Shiite Iran, where angry protesters attacked the Saudi embassy: not the decisive event but emblematic of Saudi Arabia’s growing enmity with Iran that shapes regional conflicts from Yemen to Iraq to Syria.

* Adjacent to the similarly restive Sunni-ruled, Shiite-majority Gulf monarchy of Bahrain.

** Al-Nimr’s nephew, Ali Mohammed Baqir al-Nimr, is still under a death sentence today that could be ratified by the sovereign at any time. He was arrested in February 2012 for anti-regime protests, when he was only 17 years old.

On this day..