President: Saudi Imprudence Unacceptable

TEHRAN (Dispatches) -- President Hassan Rouhani said Monday the scale of imprudence on the part of Saudi authorities in dealing with the recent crush that occurred in Mina near the Saudi Arabian city of Mecca is unacceptable.

Date: 05 October 2015 - 21:41

News ID: ۱۹۱۴۰

"There are so many cameras in Mina, and their monitoring rooms are keeping an eye on all the streets and the whole crowd every single moment and can even take films and photos of the crowd,” said the president at a conference here.
"Such an incident happens in a country that is in possession of so many helicopters, airplanes and petro-cash; and there has been mismanagement at the beginning of the incident and in its aftermath,” said the president.
"Chaos in the first five to 10 minutes is acceptable; but, that the pilgrims were held up in the sun while being thirsty for so many hours is not acceptable,” President Rouhani said.
The president then referred to his recent speech at the 70th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, saying he got the voice of the Iranian nation heard over the tragedy before the world’s heads of state at the international body.
He said Iranian Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif – whom he called a "national hero” in Iran’s history – made every effort to follow up on the case.
Zarif made great efforts during his meetings with world political officials and the UN chief, the president said. He said Iran will continue to follow up on the Mina tragedy.
Elsewhere in his remarks, the president touched upon the agreement signed between Iran and the P5+1 over Iran’s nuclear program, describing it as a "big success”.
"There is no one in the world who would say Iran was not successful in the negotiations,” President Rouhani said.
The Iranian president then took a swipe at the opponents of the agreement, and said their approach does not serve the interests of the nation.
Iran’s Intelligence Ministry said it is collecting hard evidence to determine whether or not the crush in Mina occurred with malice aforethought.
"The Intelligence Ministry has begun its work in this regard,” said Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi at a funeral service held in the southern city of Shiraz in Fars Province for a number of the Iranian pilgrims killed in the tragedy.
The minister further said the Mina incident is not an issue that only Iran is concerned with, but rather "a key issue facing the world of Islam and 22 mourning Islamic countries”.
Stressing that the tragedy has an "international dimension”, Alavi urged Iran and other Islamic nations to work in tandem to pursue the matter.
The Iranian vice president for legal affairs is also making arrangements to file a lawsuit with international legal circles on behalf of the bereaved families of the victims to prompt proper action on the tragic event, the intelligence minister added.
Saudi authorities’ incompetence and imprudence are to blame for the incident, said the minister, adding that the Saudi government could have mitigated the extent of the tragedy and Muslim nations’ outrage if it had cooperated in attending to the wounded and identifying the deceased.
Meanwhile, Iran's Defense Minister Brigadier General HUssein Dehqan said Muslim countries need to keep vigilant against Saudi Arabia’s crimes, including the recent deadly Mina crush and Riyadh’s military aggression against Yemen.
In a message to his Lebanese counterpart Samir Moqbel, the Iranian minister said Saudi rulers’ lack of foresight and mismanagement are the reasons behind the tragic stampede in Mina during the Hajj pilgrimage rituals.
"This terrible catastrophe along with inhumane crimes by Saudi rulers against the oppressed and defenseless Yemeni people, which are a reminder of the Zionist regime’s cruel crimes in Lebanon and Palestine, raises the alarm that such crimes should be stopped through absolute vigilance and prudence of Muslim countries,” Dehqan said.