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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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100289
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10028900.008
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1990-09-18
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WORLD, Page 27World NotesSAUDI ARABIAOff with Their Heads
Iran has often charged Saudi Arabia with failing to protect
the sacred sites of Islam. But when Iranian visitors staged riots
during the annual pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca in 1987,
Saudi security forces did not hesitate before attempting to quell
the disturbances. More than 400 people, most of them Iranians, died
during the violent clashes, leading to a break in diplomatic
relations between the two countries the following year. Last week
the Saudis demonstrated their resolve to punish disrupters of the
hajj. In the largest public execution in recent years, swordsmen
in Mecca publicly beheaded 16 Kuwaiti citizens for detonating bombs
in Mecca last July.
The bombings, which killed one Pakistani pilgrim, may also have
had an Iranian connection. Saudi television broadcast what it said
was the confession of the ringleader, Mansour Hassan Abdullah
Mehmeid, 32. He and some of his accomplices had received Iranian
training, said Mehmeid, and "collected the explosives from the back
door of the Iranian embassy in Kuwait."