JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia -- Two Saudi diplomats based in Iran have charged Iran with abusing embassy personnel during and after the sacking of the Saudi Embassy in Tehran last month.
Marwan Bashir al Romi, the Saudi charge d'affaires, and Reda Nuzha, the consul general, said in interviews with the Saudi Gazette during the weekend that Saudi personnel and their dependents had been beaten in the attack on the embassy Aug. 1.
The attack followed riots the previous day in the Saudi holy city of Mecca, where Iran accused Saudi police of killing about 275 Iranian pilgrims. In addition, U.S. State Department officials said the Saudi government reported 85 Saudi security personnel and 42 pilgrims of other nationalities were killed.
Nuzha said Iranian Revolutionary Guards attacked him, breaking his glasses and causing severe eye damage, which later required an operation.
Romi accused Iran of negligence in the medical care of Mosaid al Ghamdi, a Saudi political attache injured in the embassy attack, contributing to his eventual death.
He said Saudi Arabia offered to evacuate Ghamdi aboard a medical plane equipped with an operating room but the Iranian government refused.
Romi and Nuzha returned to Saudi Arabia last week and expressed concern over the nine Saudi envoys, who have moved backed into the Tehran embassy and are continuing diplomatic functions.
All diplomats assigned to Tehran live in perpetual fear, Romi said. He quoted a Western diplomat as saying, 'My God, if this is how they treat the diplomats of an Islamic country, what would they do to us?'
In their interviews with the Saudi Gazette of Jeddah, Nuzha and Romi shed chilling light on a three-week ordeal in which 38 Saudi nationals were kept under virtual siege.
They described the embassy takeover and detailed the abuse endured by the 11 diplomats and their families in the days that followed. Nuzha's ordeal began shortly after leaving the airport when a taxi containing the wives and families of other diplomats, who had arrived with him from Dubai, disappeared.
Doubling back to search for the car, he found it surrounded by revolutionary guards. He saw Tariq al Romi, the son of the charge d'affairs, being bundled back into the taxi after being beaten.
Ignoring pleas by one of the women to 'get away,' Nuzha got out to investigate. He said he was then attacked by nine revolutionary guards, one of whom hit him in the face with a fist around which he had wrapped a watch.
At that point, a bus had stopped. The passengers separated Nuzha from the guards, who left when they saw the blood pouring from his eye.
Nuzha said one woman later told him she recognized the men as the same ones who had detained the group at the airport and who had told them to take a taxi rather than a diplomatic car to the embassy because of danger in the streets.
The two taxis then made their way to the home of another Saudi diplomat, Faiz al Ama, where a doctor was called.
The Saudi Embassy was sacked in what Romi described as pre-planned attacks that came in three waves 45 minutes apart.
The revolutionary guards came in buses, Romi said, and brought along specialists to break security locks before they ransacked the embassy. They took money, passports and all the diplomatic papers they could find. They knew exactly where everything was, he said.
As yet, the Saudis have not received a full explanation of the circumstances surrounding the death of Ghamdi.
But it is believed Ghamdi was isolated in the attack and chased to the roof of the embassy. When he tried to escape by jumping to an adjacent buildings, he fell through a glass roof.
Ghamdi was beaten as he lay amid the broken glass, Nuzha said. Romi added that he was left unattended for two hours.
Despite his injuries, the Saudi government believed Ghamdi might survive and offered to evacuate him aboard a medical plane equipped with an operating room. But Tehran refused agree to the arrangement.
Instead, he was taken to the Dr. Shariati Hospital in Tehran where he was kept under guard.
For days, Romi said he was prevented from seeing Ghamdi. He was told the diplomat had suffered severe internal bleeding and was under intensive care. When members of the Saudi legation were finally allowed into the hospital, they said Ghamdi was prevented from speaking freely by a guard.
It was days before Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs allowed Ghamdi to be flown home aboard an Iran Air jet that was to pick up hajj pilgrims from Jeddah. But revolutionary guards prevented him from boarding, because, they said, he did not have medical clearance to leave.
He died at the airport seven hours later. His body was taken back to the hospital, and Romi was informed the following day.
