Stop meddling, Iraq, Iran told

Manama : A day after Iraq ambassador was summoned, Foreign Affairs Minister Shaikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa has warned senior Iraqi and Iranian officials against interfering in the Kingdom’s domestic affairs. In separate messages posted on his official page on Twitter, the Minister asked former Iraqi vice president and former prime minister Nouri Al Maliki and the Iranian Judicial Authority head Ayatolla Aamli Larijani to mind their own business.

“Al Maliki should keep silent if he has any self-respect. He should remember the stance of Bahrain towards his country. He shouldn’t, through my country, with accusations that apply to him and his sectarian rule,” said Shaikh Khalid in his reply to Maliki’s recent remarks on the judicial sentences carried out against terror convicts in Bahrain. 

Maliki had made controversial comments on his official page on Facebook describing the judgment of the Bahraini court as “heinous crime and authoritarian act”.

Addressing the Iranian official, Shaikh Khalid posted on his account yesterday saying, “Ayatolla Aamli Larijani. As you have interfered in the Bahraini judicial affairs without any right, I bring to your notice the numbers of gallows you set up for the people of Iran on a daily basis.”

The minister’s comment shed light on the increasing numbers of executions in Iran, as official statistics positioned it as the country with the second highest rates of capital punishments in the world, with 743 executions in 2014 and 753 in the first half of 2015.