Obama blamed for failing to prevent Shiite cleric’s death

Mohammed al-Nimr, brother of the Shiite cleric executed by the Saudis

The brother of a prominent Shiite cleric whose execution has roiled the Mideast and set off worldwide protests is blaming President Obama for failing to use his influence with the Saudi government to prevent his death.

“I am sorry to say that the American government did not offer to make any efforts on this, although they knew the danger of this action and the repercussions,” Mohammed Al-Nimr said about the weekend execution of his brother, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

“We asked very clearly for the American president to intervene as a friend of Saudi Arabia — and the Americans did not intervene,” he added.

While he personally asked officials at the U.S. consulate in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, to urge the president to speak out forcefully against his brother’s death sentence, “the Americans did not issue such a statement,” al-Nimr said in a telephone interview from Awamya in eastern Saudi Arabia. “They limited themselves to general statements from the State Department.”

The question of how forcefully the Obama administration raised the treatment of Sheik al-Nimr with the Saudi government — and whether it was caught flat-footed by the intense response in the region — got new attention Monday, a day after protestors stormed the Saudi Embassy in Tehran over the execution, and Saudi Arabia cut off relations with Iran in response. Iran is the leading Shiite power and views itself as the protector of Shiite interests in the Mideast. The issue also made its way to the presidential campaign trail where Hillary Clinton — whose former top legislative aide at the State Department is now a lobbyist for Saudi Arabia — mildly criticized the execution of al-Nimr, one of 47 prisoners who were put to death, mostly by beheading, by the Saudis over the weekend.

“Clearly, this raises serious questions that we have to raise directly with the Saudi government,” Clinton said at a campaign event in New Hampshire.

The comments by Mohammed al-Nimr, himself a Shiite political dissident as well as a businessman, had added poignancy because his son, Ali al-Nimr, is also facing a Saudi death sentence.

Arrested by Saudi authorities in 2011 when he was 17 for participating in street protests during the Arab Spring, Ali al-Nimr was sentenced to be executed — with his body to be crucified following his death — last September, an action that has been widely condemned by human rights groups. State Department spokesman John Kirby said at the time that the U.S. government was “deeply concerned by the case of Ali al-Nimr,” noting that he was then a juvenile and that a confession he made in a Saudi jail was reportedly made “under duress.”

Followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr hold posters of Sheik Nimr al-Nimr in Baghdad on Monday, Jan. 4.

Mohammed al-Nimr said that, in the aftermath of his brother’s execution, he is now increasingly concerned that his son will also be put to death.

“Our fears were great, but now our fears are greater,” he said. “We don’t trust promises anymore. This issue needs political energy from the friends of Saudi Arabia. I am certain that if somebody like Obama calls for the release of Ali al-Nimr, Ali would be set free.”