Saudi authorities have released seven Shias detained after protests in the oil-rich Eastern Province earlier this year, activists said on Tuesday. The group attended a “guidance session” by a Shia cleric before leaving prison, the same sources said. They were arrested during demonstrations supporting mass pro-democracy protests led by the Shia majority in neighbouring Bahrain, and denouncing the intervention of Saudi troops there. The protests shook the kingdom’s Eastern Province from March, with a total of 385 people arrested, of whom around 60 remain in custody, according to activists. Saudi Arabia’s estimated two million Shias mostly live in the Eastern Province and complain of being marginalised in the Sunni-dominated kingdom.
