Cleric holed up in mosque

2004-04-05 21:00

Kufa - Iraqi Shiite radical Moqtada Sadr was barricaded inside a mosque in this shrine city on Monday as the US-led coalition announced a warrant for his arrest for the murder of a rival cleric last year.

Sadr was holed up inside the holy Kufa mosque, even before the coalition announced a warrant was out for the defiant young leader.

"He will not be arrested, we will not allow his arrest, not by the Americans, not by the British and not by anyone else," Hazem al-Araji, director of Sadr's office in Kadhimiya, a Shiite district of the capital, said.

"We will be human shields for his protection," he added.

Top coalition spokesperson Dan Senor said Sadr's arrest warrant had been issued several months ago in connection with the murder of Abdul Majid Khoei, who had been flown in to Iraq by the coalition last year to act as a moderating force.

Outlawed

Earlier on Monday, US overseer in Iraq Paul Bremer declared Sadr an outlaw, prompting thousands of his devotees to fan across Kufa and gather in the mosque's courtyard ready to defend him with their lives.

In the nearby central Iraqi city of Najaf, Baghdad and the southern port of Basra, Sadr supporters went on the rampage, seizing government buildings and clashing with coalition forces.

Volunteers from Sadr's Mehdi Army militia, dressed in black uniforms with a green bandana across their foreheads, searched visitors who wished to enter the mosque but prevented them from going near a side chamber where Sadr prayed.

Sadr has been using the mosque as tribune to deliver scathing sermons against the coalition and the interim leadership it installed after Saddam Hussein's regime fell to invading troops a year ago.

He spent Monday praying and reciting verses from the Qu'ran, and agreed to meet with a privileged few, an aide said.

Even his food - a simple meal of rice and stewed tomato sauce - was brought to him inside the mosque by his assistants, his aide said.

Demands

The wall surrounding the mosque was plastered with copies of a document listing demands which Sadr wants from the coalition, including "guarantees" that they will depart from Iraq.

Among those demands the green light to reopen Sadr's Al-Hawza Al-Natiqa weekly newspaper which Bremer closed for 60 days last week after accusing it of inciting violence against coalition troops.

That incident sparked a series of daily protests against the coalition which spread to Shiite regions across Iraq and erupted into deadly violence on Sunday as Sadr partisans clashed with coalition troops.

Copies of the documents were pressed into the hands of waves of Sadr followers who visited the mosque.

- AFP