ABU SAMRA, QATAR-SAUDI ARABIA BORDER: Qatar’s normally bustling desert border with Saudi Arabia was deserted on Monday, with a few dozen frustrated travelers bemoaning a rift between Gulf powers that has frozen movement across Qatar’s only land border.
A week after the frontier was shut by the Saudis, soldiers in an armored pick-up truck looked out over a barbed-wire fence at sprawling empty dustland separating Qatar from Saudi Arabia.
Indian migrants who work at the border in green uniforms lay on inspection platforms sheltering from the sun.
Normally, thousands of passengers and hundreds of trucks from Saudi Arabia pass through the crossing each day, bringing fruit and vegetables, as well as construction materials for projects that include stadiums for the 2022 World Cup.
Qatar is the world’s richest country per capita, with just 2.7 million residents and income from the world’s biggest exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Nearly 90 percent of its population are foreign foreign workers, mostly from South Asia or poorer countries in the Middle East.
Qatar’s financial markets stabilized on Monday after a week of losses as the government showed it had ways to keep the economy running in the face of sanctions by other Gulf states.
At the land border, dozens of truck drivers had been stranded on the Qatari side. One Sri Lankan driver asked Qatari border guards if he could drive into Saudi Arabia if he agreed to leave his cargo, a tanker full of helium, behind in Qatar.
“We can do nothing,” the border guard told him. “Saudi has shut the border. There is no way to pass.”
On weekends, the land border is normally used by thousands of Saudis. A few miles from the border a vast sea-front complex with an aqua park and whitewashed villas is being built by the Hilton hotel chain for Saudi tourists.
Qatar-Saudi land border deserted
Qatar-Saudi land border deserted
Iraq executes a former senior officer under Saddam for the 1980 killing of a Shiite cleric
- Al-Sadr was a leading critic of Saddam’s secular Baathist government whose dissent intensified after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran
- The cleric’s execution in 1980 became a symbol of oppression under Saddam
BAGHDAD: Iraq announced on Monday that a high-level security officer during the rule of Saddam Hussein has been hanged for his involvement in the 1980 killing of a prominent Shiite cleric.
The National Security Service said that Saadoun Sabri Al-Qaisi, who held the rank of major general under Saddam and was arrested last year, was convicted of “grave crimes against humanity,” including the killing of prominent Iraqi Shiite cleric Mohammed Baqir Al-Sadr, members of the Al-Hakim family, and other civilians.
The agency did not say when Al-Qaisi was executed.
Al-Sadr was a leading critic of Iraq’s secular Baathist government and Saddam, his opposition intensifying following the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, which heightened Saddam’s fears of a Shiite-led uprising in Iraq.
In 1980, as the government moved against Shiite activists, Al-Sadr and his sister Bint Al-Huda — a religious scholar and activist who spoke out against government oppression — were arrested. Reports indicate they were tortured before being executed by hanging on April 8, 1980.
The execution sparked widespread outrage at the time and remains a symbol of repression under Saddam’s rule. Saddam was from Iraq’s Sunni minority.
Since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, authorities have pursued former officials accused of crimes against humanity and abuses against political and religious opponents. Iraq has faced criticism from human rights groups over its application of the death penalty.
