Ayatollah accuses Saudis of murdering 2,400 in haj stampede.

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The Saudi Arabian armed forces parade yesterday in Muzdalifah, the meeting place for the haj near Mecca. 

The Supreme Leader of Iran has accused Saudi Arabia of “murdering” pilgrims injured in a deadly stampede during last year’s haj and demanded that the kingdom be stripped of its right to oversee Islam’s holiest sites.
In a blistering statement, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blamed Iran’s long-term Sunni rival for a fatal crush that took place a year ago during the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. More than 2,400 people were killed, including 464 Iranians, making it the deadliest incident in the history of the haj.

The Iranian leader claimed that the Saudis had “locked up” the wounded with corpses during the tragedy, adding to the death toll. He urged the world to reconsider Saudi Arabia’s right to manage the holy sites. “The heartless and murderous Saudis locked up the injured with the dead in containers, instead of providing medical treatment and helping them or at least quenching their thirst. They murdered them,” the top cleric said in a statement published on his website.
He also blamed Saudi Arabia for a crane collapse in Mecca that killed a further 111 people, just days before last year’s stampede. “Instead of apology and remorse and judicial prosecution of those who were directly at fault in that horrifying event Saudi rulers, with utmost shamelessness and insolence, refused to allow the formation of an international Islamic fact-finding committee,” he said. “The world of Islam must fundamentally reconsider the management of the two holy places and the issue of haj.”
Citing security concerns, Tehran has barred its citizens from attending this year’s pilgrimage, which is due to start on Friday. More than two million people are expected to descend on Mecca for the event, which is one of the five pillars of Islam.


Saudi Arabia, which prides itself on its careful management of the pilgrimage, said that Iran was trying to politicise the event and in doing so compromised pilgrim safety. “The Iranian authorities are not interested in the arrival of Iranians,” the Saudi news agency SPA quoted Crown Prince Mohammed bin Naif as saying.
They seek to “politicise haj and convert it into an occasion to violate the teachings of Islam . . . we stand firmly and strongly against works that breach security”, he added.
Saudi officials, meanwhile, called the Ayatollah’s statement a new low. “These accusations are not only unfounded, but also timed to only serve their unethical, failing propaganda,” Abdulmohsen Alyas, a senior official in the ministry of culture and information, said.
Last year’s tragedy reignited a longstanding feud between the two countries. Tensions reached boiling point in January after the Saudis executed the prominent Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr on terrorism charges that Iran said were unjustified. Hundreds of Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran and torched the offices.
Ayatollah Khamenei called it “divine vengeance” and compared Saudi Arabia to Isis. Saudi Arabia consequently cut diplomatic ties and ejected Iran’s envoy. Attempts to hold talks to patch together relations and allow Iranians to attend the haj have failed.
Witnesses to last year’s stampede told The Times that the crush had happened after opposing lanes of people collided near Rami Jamarat, or “the place of the pebbles”, where pilgrims hurl rocks at pillars representing the devil.
The Saudi authorities have announced new safety measures before this year’s pilgrimage, including the introduction of e-bracelets. The hi-tech bangles are connected to a GPS location system, store pilgrims’ medical information and inform them of their worshipping schedule to avoid overlaps. They also installed 800 surveillance cameras at the Grand Mosque to monitor crowd build up and introduced shorter visiting hours for Rami Jamarat.

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