Nov 3, 2016

A court in Riyadh has sentenced a Saudi national to 15 years in prison for supporting executed Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, local media reported on Thursday.

Nimr and three other members of the kingdom's minority Shiite community were among 47 people convicted of terrorism and executed on a single day in January.

The executions provoked anger among Shiites and concern in the West, and raised tensions between Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran.

Nimr was a driving force behind protests among Shiites that began in 2011.

Those protests later developed into a call for equality in the kingdom where Shiites, most of whom live in the kingdom's east, complain of marginalisation.