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Shi'ite cleric ordered to leave
13/04/2003 11:58 - (SA)
Kuwait City - Gunmen in the holy city of Najaf have surrounded the house of Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's leading Shiite cleric, and ordered him to leave the country, a cleric in Kuwait told AFP on Sunday.
"Armed groups in Najaf... are threatening Imam Sistani... and demanding he leave Iraq within 48 hours," Mohammed Baqr Musawi al-Muhri said in a statement.
"This group rallied yesterday (Saturday) in front of Imam Sistani's house, shouting 'Live, Live al-Sadr,' and demanding Sistani leave."
Ayatollah Mohammed Mohammed Sadek al-Sadr, an Iraqi Shi'ite dignitary, was assassinated in 1999 by Saddam Hussein's regime, sparking major riots in Najaf, one of the holiest cities for Shi'ite Muslims.
The statement said the holy Iranian city of Qom was "very worried" about the fate of Sistani and Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim, who leads the Iran-based Supreme Assembly for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI).
The same armed group was demanding that Hakim recognise Sadr's 22-year-old son Sayed Moqtada Sadr "or he will be punished," it said.
The statement called for swift intervention from "Muslims, free and honest people and the United Nations... to save the lives" of Shi'ite clerics in Najaf.
Pro-Western Iraqi Shiite leader Sayyed Abdul Majid al-Khoei was assassinated in Najaf on Thursday.
Khoei had been based in London since the crushed 1991 Shi'ite uprising in southern Iraq and had just come returned to Iraq amid the US-led war to topple Saddam.
A statement issued by the al-Khoei Foundation, which the slain cleric headed in the British capital for the previous 12 years, accused "agents of the dictatorial regime now on its deathbed in Iraq" of being behind the assault.
The cleric was the son of the late Ayatollah Abolqassem al-Khoei, one of the main leaders of Iraq's Shiite community during the 1991 Gulf War, who died in 1992 under house arrest.
There had been speculation that Khoei, who had called for Shi'ite co-operation with the United States, had gone back to Najaf with help from US forces, and that his return signaled a US attempt to promote a "pro-American" current among Iraq's majority Shi'ite community as Saddam's regime collapsed.
- AFX
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