The Al Al-Beit institution in Cairo and Baghdad are joining efforts to press charges against 22 Saudi clerics, accusing them of issuing fatwas, religious decrees, that label the Shi’ites as infidels and incite to violence against them.
News of the plan appeared in the Sunday edition of the London-based Al-Quds Al-‘Arabi, and in several other Arabic language websites.
Muhammad A-Dureini, who heads the institute in Cairo, said he made an agreement with Wa’d Al-Husseini, who heads the Hashemite Al Al-Beit in Iraq, to pursue Saudi religious clerics in court, in order to settle accounts with them.
The Iraqi branch of Al Al-Beit is making the appropriate arrangements to take the clerics to an international court, where they want them charged for crimes against humanity.
Al-Husseini told Al-Quds Al-‘Arabi that several committees had finished preparing the charge sheets against the Saudi clerics this week.
He said fatwas that were issued in Saudi Arabia and documented in audio and pictures, ordered people to attack Shias on the grounds that they were infidels.
The Shias affirm that under international law this is considered a crime against humanity and that thousands of people have been victimized because of it, cases that will be used as evidence in a future court case.
The case has been brought before an Iraqi official who will study it before it is referred to the international court for war crimes, so that it will be taken to court through state institutions and not by private initiative.
“We have sure evidence that these fatwas caused an increase in violence and terror attacks in Iraq,” Al-Husseini told the paper. “There was a series of bombings that occurred after these 22 Saudi clerics issued a fatwa, and they harmed and killed several people.”
A Saudi Shia told The Media Line there was a poor relationship between Shias and Sunnis in the kingdom and that Saudi news items about Shias or about Iran often used derogatory and inciting language, calling them enemies of Islam and accusing them of being unpatriotic.
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