Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim

The Iranian Student Movement Up to the Minute Reports ^ | August 29, 2003 | Reuters

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Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim

Reuters - World News Aug 29, 2003

NAJAF - Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, killed by a car bomb in the Iraqi shrine city of Najaf on Friday, was the long-exiled leader of one of the main Shi'ite Muslim groups jockeying for power in postwar Iraq.

Hakim had sought to avoid confrontation with U.S.-led forces occupying Iraq since the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, and authorised his brother to serve on the U.S.-appointed 25-member Iraqi Governing Council set up in July.

But he said in a interview with Reuters in June that Iraq's Shi'ite majority could turn against the U.S.-led occupiers if they were not given political compensation for decades of persecution under Saddam's dictatorship.

"They gave the justification that they came in the name of liberation but now they are an occupying force. That is what is making people angry," the black-turbaned cleric said. "If the people lose their patience, there will be a social uproar."

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