The painting of Sheikh Nimr was taken down

Sheikh Nimr’s street sign was taken down

On Sunday, April 8th, a journalist in Mashhad reported that there was no trace of the street sign for the Saudi Consulate in Mashhad, which had been named after Ayatollah Sheikh Nimr, the executed Shiite cleric in Saudi Arabia.

It seems that the removal of Ayatollah Nimr’s street sign, which was turned into a symbol of his death due to his alleged involvement in the attack on the Saudi embassy, happened following the Tehran-Riyadh agreement and on the verge of reopening the embassy. After seven rounds of negotiations over three years, the agreement was finally reached on February 28th, last year, in Beijing.

Diplomatic relations between Tehran and Riyadh were severed since 2015, after supporters of the government attacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran in response to Sheikh Nimr’s execution.

On January 2nd, 2016, the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced in an official statement that Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, along with 46 others, had been executed on charges of terrorism and mainly for his association with Al-Qaeda.

He, who was considered one of the leaders of the Shiite protests in Saudi Arabia in 2011, had studied in the city of Qom.