Saudi Arabia's top religious figure on Wednesday condemned as a "sin" the attack on a U.S. consulate, as Saudi dailies reported one of the assailants was a former employee of the kingdom's religious police.
Grand Mufti Abdul-Aziz al-Sheikh said in a statement that anyone who enters the kingdom with the permission of its leaders has a promise of security and should not be attacked. "What happened on Monday regarding the storming of the U.S. consulate in Jiddah, using weapons and explosives, killing innocent souls, petrifying secure ones, and undermining security in the kingdom are all forbidden acts and grand sins," al-Sheikh said, according to the AP.
Meanwhile, the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan reported that one of the gunmen killed in the assault had been fired from a job in Medina with the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, the kingdom's religious police.
The newspaper quoted Saad Mohammed al-Sumeiry as saying his cousin, Fayez bin Awad al-Juhaini, 28-year-old school dropout, was fired for "bad behavior."
