Saudis to blame for Mina tragedy: Pundit

Press TV has conducted an interview with Redwan Rizk, a political commentator in Beirut, about Iranian lawmakers calling on the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to dispatch a fact-finding mission to Saudi Arabia to probe the recent deadly incident that happened during the Hajj pilgrimage rituals in Mina, outside the holy city of Mecca.

What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV:  Your take sir. You hear what is being said coming out of Iran and also the Majlis or parliament speaker today said that the Saudis must be held responsible and looking at it from international perspective, do you think that legal actions can be taken and that they should be held responsible because there are some that say that it was just meant to be and that it was fate?   

Rizk: Well it is actually yes. Some legal actions must be taken against the Saudi authorities because they are the first to be blamed for this tragedy, for this catastrophe which harvested hundreds of lives and left about thousands injured.

So far the investigation is still something covered and unreleased. The investigation by the authorities which is being done or took place by the authorities of Saudi Arabia is still under cover, it is still not released, it is not clear. What is leaked out of some information is that lots of missing in organizing the pilgrims, the routing of the pilgrims, this is first.

Second, that there is some information still kept behind the media or behind the scenes that one of the royal family convoys which was coming against the routing or the normal routing caused all this chaos among the pilgrims which has caused this kind of chaos which went out of control and ended up with hundreds of martyrs, let’s say, of pilgrims in Mina. Now due to this information, direct responsibility must be appointed against the Saudi authorities because this royal family member is the one to be blamed for this causing, directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally.  

The authorities of Saudi Arabia must be held responsible and they must apologize. First they must pay some kind of ransom to the families of the martyrs, pilgrims. Second they owe an apology to the Iranians and to all nationalities who paid the price in Mecca and so far the question remaining is that this is being repeatable year after year and hundreds and thousands of people ending up killed or dead by the missing organizing of the Saudi authorities and this is showing that the Saudis are not capable in organizing such an event or such an incident and they must be reconsidered that the people or the government who is eligible to organize such an event for millions of Muslims every year.

So as I said this kind of organizing the trips of the pilgrims and organizing the routing, organizing the movement and the staying of the pilgrims must be from some other governments and from all nationalities must be there. They must help organizing. They must have some sort of representatives on the ground just at least to make sure that their citizens who are just praying there in Mecca, they must be protected somehow.

It is not acceptable anymore that people who are just praying [to] God in Mecca must be killed because this Al Saud family is denying that they are not capable and the Saudi authorities are not capable in organizing such event and they must understand that this kind of action and reaction from the Saudi government is not acceptable anymore and the lives of those poor pilgrims is not going to go for nothing. So first of all they must be questioned and second they must be trialed …

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