Sadr gives up Najaf shrine
2004-08-27 13:44
Najaf - Rebel cleric Moqtada Sadr has officially handed over control of Najaf's Imam Ali shrine to Iraq's top Shiite religious authority, a representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani said on Friday.
"Moqtada Sadr has officially handed over control of the shrine to Marjaiya," Sheikh Hassan al-Husseini, one of 12 delegates from Sistani's office visiting the shrine, said.
The handover happend at 13:30 exactly, Husseini said.
Sadr spokesperson Sheikh Ahmed al-Shaibani and the head of Sistani's Beirut office, Ahmed Khaffaf, signed a document formally attesting to the handover before all Sadr and Sistani representatives left the compound.
One of Sistani's representatives shut the door behind them and gave the key to Khaffaf, a correspondent witnessed.
Last week, Sadr aides said they would hand over the keys to the Imam Ali to Sistani, although arrangements for doing so had remained in limbo until a deal to end more than three weeks of fighting was unveiled late on Thursday.
The Mehdi Army has occupied the Imam Ali complex, one of the holiest Shiite pilgrimage centres in the world, since Sadr's first uprising in April.
Sistani had been reluctant to take back the shrine without ensuring nothing is missing while the Mehdi Army is also unwilling to surrender control amid any suggestion of impropriety.
On Friday, the inner doors to the shrine were closed and no one was allowed to enter, as people began to clean the compound.