RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Saudi executioners Thursday beheaded 16 Kuwaiti men, including 10 ethnic Iranians, who were convicted by an Islamic Court of staging a July bombing that killed one man during the annual Moslem pilgrimage at Mecca, Radio Riyadh reported.
The radio broadcast an interior ministry statement which said Kuwaiti authorities had been notified of the executions.
There was no immediate word on the executions from Iran, which in the past strongly protested executions of followers of its brand of Islamic fundamentalism in the kingdom.
A Pakistani pilgrim was killed July 11 in one of two explosions at Islam's hosliest shrine near the Grand Mosque in Mecca, and 16 people were wounded. Saudi authorities said a third blast near the mosque six days later did not cause any damage or casualties.
'The 16 convicted men were beheaded by sword in public,' said the radio, quoting the interior ministry statement.
It said four others, also Kuwaiti citizens, received prison terms ranging from 15 to 20 years, in addition to between 1,500 and 2,000 lashes of the whip. Nine other Kuwaitis were acquitted, the statement added.
It said the defendants arrived in the kingdom in July posing as hajj pilgrims, 'belonged to the Moslem Shi'ite sect, and were of Iranian, Kuwaiti, Saudi and Qatari origin, but all of them were Kuwaiti citizens.'
The explosions shook Mecca as some 2 million Moslems from around the world were preparing to head for Mount Arafat for the culmination of the pilgrimage rites.
Radio Riyadh said the defendants, who were tried before an Islamic Court, gave full confessions which state-run Saudi television would be screening.
It said the executions were carried out in Mecca 'in accordance with Islamic law' -- a reference to execution by beheading. Convicted prisoners in Saudi Arabia, where the death penalty is imposed, are usually beheaded by sword in public squares after Moslem prayers.
The radio said the defendants brought the explosives with them from Kuwait, where they were also trained to use them.
It said they met in Kuwait and the sacred Moslem cities of Mecca and Medina to plan their 'aggression, with the confessed aim of spreading terror and fear in the hearts of the pilgrims, and to show that Saudi authorities are unable to protect the house of God.'
Kuwait first revealed last month that several of its citizens were being held in Saudi Arabia on terrorism charges. King Fahd of Saudi Arabia said after the arrests that those found guilty would be 'punished severely.'
Iran boycotted the hajj season in both 1988 and 1989 to protest a Saudi quota allocation for each Moslem state according to the size of its population. Iran, with an estimated population of between 45 and 50 million, was allocated 45,000 pilgrims.
Iran protested its allocation as too small, but Saudi Arabia rejected Tehran's appeal.
More than 400 mostly Iranian pilgrims died in bloody clashes with Saudi security forces during the 1987 pilgrimage at Mecca, pushing relations between the two states to their lowest ebb.
Saudi authorities at the time accused Iran of planning to take over the sacred Islamic shrines and then declare the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini leader of the Islamic world.
Iranian mobs sacked the embassies in Tehran of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait days after the 1987 Mecca incident, killing one Saudi diplomat.
Saudi Arabia broke off diplomatic ties with Iran in April 1988 after accusing Tehran of plotting acts of terrorism against the kingdom.
