Iranian protesters ransacked and set fire to part of the Saudi Embassy in Tehran on Saturday after Saudi Arabia executed an outspoken Shiite cleric who had criticized the kingdoms treatment of its Shiite minority.
Protesters broke furniture and smashed windows in an annex to the embassy, said a witness who was reached by telephone from Tehran. The protesters also set fire to the room, said the witness, who would provide only his first name, Abolfazl, because he had been involved in the protest.
The police arrived and cleared the embassy grounds of protesters and extinguished the fire, he said.
The protest against the execution of the cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, turned violent after participants began throwing Molotov cocktails at the embassy and then broke into the compound.
Sheikh Nimr was executed in Saudi Arabia along with 46 men on terrorism-related charges, drawing condemnation from Iran and its allies in the region as well as protests around Iran and in other countries.
Saudi officials said the mass execution, one of the largest in the kingdom in decades, was aimed at deterring violence against the state. But analysts said that the grouping of Sheikh Nimr with hardened jihadists was a warning to domestic dissidents that could exacerbate sectarian tensions across the Middle East.
