First the are bones from western media. There will be a LOT MORE about this.

"What a - predictable - drag. Here's how 2016 starts; with White Daesh doing what it does best: a beheading orgy, including Shi'ite cleric Sheikh Nimr-al-Nimr. Black Daesh endorses it. The White House gives it a pass. Black Houses all across MENA and beyond rejoice."

--Pepe Escobar

Saudi execution of Shia cleric sparks outrage in Middle East

Iranian government and religious leaders say killing of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr will have serious repercussions for royal family

the Guardian,

2 January, 2015

The Iranian government and religious leaders across the Middle East have condemned Saudi Arabia’s execution of a prominent Shia cleric and warned of repercussions that could bring down the country’s royal family.

In a serious escalation of religious and diplomatic tensions in the region, councils and clerics in Iran, Yemen and Lebanon said the killing of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr would prompt widespread anger.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Hossein Jaber Ansari, accused Riyadh of hypocrisy. “The Saudi government supports terrorists and takfiri [radical Sunni] extremists, while executing and suppressing critics inside the country,” he told the Iranian state news agency.

In Bahrain, police fired teargas at several dozen people protesting against the cleric’s execution, a witness said. Demonstrators carrying pictures of Nimr faced security forces in a standoff in Abu-Saiba, a Shia village west of the capital, Manama.

Activists have called for protests in the Sunni-ruled kingdom, a sign that Nimr’s death may further inflame sectarian tensions in the Middle East.

The execution was described as a “grave mistake” by the Supreme Islamic Shia Council in Lebanon and a “flagrant violation of human rights” by Yemen’s Houthi movement.

Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, a leading Iranian cleric, said repercussions would bring down the Saudi ruling family.

He told the Mehr news agency: “I have no doubt that this pure blood will stain the collar of the House of Saud and wipe them from the pages of history. The crime of executing Sheikh Nimr is part of a criminal pattern by this treacherous family … the Islamic world is expected to cry out and denounce this infamous regime as much as it can.”

Nimr was one of 47 people Saudi Arabian executed for terrorism on Friday. The interior ministry said most of those killed were involved in a series of al-Qaida attacks between 2003 and 2006.

It also detained hundreds of minority Shia Muslims after protests between 2011 and 2013, during which several police officers were killed in shootings and petrol bomb attacks. Several of those held were sentenced to death.

Saudi interior minister announces executions which include Shia cleric.

The interior ministry statement began with verses from the Qur’an justifying the use of execution, and state television showed footage of the aftermath of al-Qaida attacks in the last decade. The Saudi grand mufti, Sheikh Abdulaziz Al al-Sheikh, appeared on television soon after to describe the executions as just.

Iran’s Shia leadership said the execution of Nimr “would cost Saudi Arabia dearly”. The brother of the cleric said the family was shocked by news of his execution but hoped that any reaction would be peaceful.

“Sheikh Nimr enjoyed high esteem in his community and within Muslim society in general and no doubt there will be reaction,” Mohammed al-Nimr told Reuters by telephone. “We hope that any reactions would be confined to a peaceful framework. No one should have any reaction outside this peaceful framework. Enough bloodshed.”

In October 2015 Saudi Arabia’s supreme court rejected an appeal against the death sentence passed earlier on Nimr, who had called for pro-democracy demonstrations and whose arrest in 2012 sparked protests in which three people died.

Nimr had long been regarded as the most vocal Shia leader in the eastern Saudi province of Qatif, willing to publicly criticise the ruling al-Saud family and call for elections. He was, however, careful to avoid calling for violence, analysts say.

That did not prevent the interior ministry from accusing him of being behind attacks on police, alongside a group of other suspects it said were working on behalf of Iran, the kingdom’s main regional rival.

The simultaneous execution of 47 people on security grounds was the biggest such event in Saudi Arabia since the 1980 killing of 63 jihadi rebels who seized Mecca’s Grand Mosque in 1979.

The executions are Saudi Arabia’s first in 2016. At least 157 people were put to death last year, a significant increase on the 90 people killed in 2014.

Uproar in Middle East after Saudi Arabia executes top Shiite cleric

https://www.rt.com/news/327728-saudi-executes-shiite-cleric/

02 January 2016

20:22 GMT

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards warned the Saudi Al Saud ruling family that their decision to execute a prominent Shiite cleric will result in a backlash.

“A harsh revenge will strike the Al Saud in the near future and cause the fall of this pro-terrorist, anti-Islamic regime,” the Guards said in a statement cited by Mehr news agency.

19:44 GMT

19:34 GMT

Saudi Arabia summoned the Iranian ambassador in Riyadh over Iran’s "hostile" remarks on executions, according to the state news agency SPA.

The ministry expressed “astonishment and its utter rejection of these hostile statements, which it deemed a blatant intervention in the kingdom's affairs."

19:34 GMT

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, warned that Saudi Arabia’s execution of the cleric could have “dangerous consequences.” She also said that the incident raises serious concerns over freedom of expression and the respect for basic civil and political rights.

“This case has also the potential of inflaming further the sectarian tensions that already bring so much damage to the entire region, with dangerous consequences,” she said.

19:22 GMT

Following the execution, Iranian lawmakers asked the Foreign Ministry to downgrade diplomatic ties with the Saudi government, FARS news agency reported. They proposed reducing the number of Saudi diplomats and consulates in Iran.

19:00 GMT

A German foreign ministry official condemned the execution, saying it deepened worries about the region.

“The execution of Nimr al-Nimr strengthens our existing concerns about increasing tensions and deepening rifts in the region,” he anonymously told Reuters.

18:54 GMT

Humam Hamoudi, a prominent Shiite politician from Iraq and member of the powerful Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) party, warned that the execution would benefit terrorists in the region by exacerbating sectarian strife.

18:53 GMT

Former Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki compared the execution with the incident when a prominent Shiite cleric was killed by the Iraqi government in 1980 and said that it would topple the Saudi government "as the crime of executing the martyr (Mohammed Baqir) al-Sadr did to Saddam (Hussein)."

18:53 GMT

Human Rights Watch strongly criticized the Saudi executions. Sarah Leah Whitson, the group’s Middle East director, said that Nimr’s trial had been “unfair” and that his execution “is only adding to the existing sectarian discord and unrest.”

“Saudi Arabia’s path to stability in the Eastern Province lies in ending systematic discrimination against Shia citizens, not in executions,” she said. “Regardless of the crimes allegedly committed, executing prisoners [en masse] only further stains Saudi Arabia’s troubling human rights record.”