Saudi Arabia said yesterday two men had been killed following Sunday’s arrest of a prominent Shia Muslim cleric that stirred some limited protests in the oil-producing east of the country.

An interior ministry spokesman said the deaths followed a protest in the village of Awamiya over the arrest on sedition accusations of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. According to Saudi authorities Nimr was shot in the leg after police came under fire on trying to stop his car.

Nimr was taken to hospital.

The interior ministry said there was no clash between protesters and police at the protest following the arrest. It did not make clear how the two were killed.

“Security authorities were notified by a nearby medical centre of the arrival of four individuals brought in by their relatives,” spokesman Major General Mansour Turki said in a comment sent to Reuters.

“Two of them were dead, the other two were slightly injured. Competent authorities initiated investigations in the incident.”

Shia activists and websites had reported that at least two men had been killed in the protests. The Rasid website named the men as Akbar al-Shakhouri and Mohamed al-Felfel.

“In the aftermath of the arrest ... a limited number of people assembled in the town of Awamiya,” the interior ministry statement said. “Gunshots were overheard in random areas of the town. However, there was no security confrontation whatsoever.”

The Rasid website quoted Sheikh Abdallah al-Khuneizi, a former Shia religious court judge, as urging residents to avoid any escalation and appealing to security forces to exercise restraint.

“This tense and difficult period that Qatif is passing through requires us all to do all we can to preserve society from any security deterioration to protect lives and sanctities,” the website quoted Khuneizi as saying in a message circulating on social media.

Activists from the Eastern Province, where most of Saudi Arabia’s Shias live, posted pictures on the Internet of a grey-bearded man they identified as Nimr inside a vehicle.
He was covered with what appeared to be a blood-stained white blanket.

Activists said Nimr had been taken to the capital Riyadh.

l A Saudi man was killed and his wife and two children were injured when their car crashed off a bridge while being pursued by religious police, a spokesman for the religious police said yesterday.

Formally known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPVPV), religious police officers arrest those who do not comply with their rules.

In March the commission’s head banned car pursuits which had led to several fatal accidents.

Family members told Saudi Arabia’s Al Watan newspaper that the chase began when a CPVPV officer confronted Abdulrahman Ahmed al-Ghamdi, 35, and his family while he was returning home from an amusement park in the southern province of Al Baha. They said the loud volume of Ghamdi’s car radio prompted the confrontation.

The car sped off, police in pursuit, and crashed over a bridge, killing Ghamdi. His nine-year-old son is in a coma and his wife had her arm amputated as a result of the accident, Al Watan reported. His younger daughter, 4, was in stable condition in hospital.

Nasser al-Zahrani, a spokesman for the CPVPV in Al Baha confirmed the report. “There is a committee set up and an investigation ongoing to look into the incident,” he said.
Sheikh Abdulatif Al al-Sheikh, the head the CPVPV, was quoted in Al Watan commenting on the incident. “I have expressed my sadness and regret to the (Al Baha governor) and we hope that he will forward the case to the appropriate department for investigation.”