Saudi diplomats receive death threats in Sudan

The Foreign Ministry of Sudan said in a statement yesterday that it had received an official note from the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia on Sunday informing them that Saudi diplomats were receiving written death threats. The Saudi embassy in Khartoum asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to take immediate action to strengthen protection and ensure the safety of the lives of members of the embassy. According to the newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, during the past few weeks several Saudi diplomats received death threats while on mission from Riyadh, including the chargé d’affaires, deputy consul, and the cultural attaché. Slightly different information was reported by Saudi newspapers, which stated that in recent days Vice Consul Wajid Masoud received a death threat via a text message on his mobile phone, the consul received a similar threat a year ago, and the cultural attaché received one two months ago. It is not known whether these threats are a response to an article by Abdul Rahman Al Rashid, a Saudi newspaper columnist, who last week accused Sudan of military cooperation with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.