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Shia cleric attacks prison abuses in defiant sermon

By Justin Huggler in Baghdad
08 May 2004

In an act of defiance that was a direct challenge to US forces, the radical Iraqi Shia cleric, Muqtada Sadr, travelled to his stronghold of Kufa yesterday to deliver the Friday sermon, despite the presence of hundreds of US troops surrounding the city and nearby Najaf.

Mr Sadr's sermon, which attacked the US forces and President George Bush over the allegations of the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib jail, came a day after US forces launched broad offensives against his Mehdi Army militia in and around the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, and in Kufa.

There are concerns that if the Americans try anything on the scale of last months' onslaught on Fallujah in Najaf or Karbala, which contain Shia Islam's holiest shrines, it could ignite a fearsome backlash among Iraq's Shia majority.

One of Mr Sadr's senior aides in the Shia city of Basra called for an uprising against British troops, and told followers that anyone capturing a female British soldier would be allowed to keep her as a slave.

Sheik Abdul-Sattar al-Bahadli offered rewards of $350 to anyone who captures a British soldier, and $150 to anyone who kills one. The offer came after a tape emerged on which Osama bin Laden apparently offered large quantities of gold as a reward for killing citizens of any of the countries providing occupation forces in Iraq.

Mr Sadr has spent much of the past four weeks holed up in the shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf, but has attended Friday prayers in nearby Kufa. Yesterday, he turned up as usual surrounded by militiamen dressed in black and carrying an anti-aircraft gun.

US commanders said they held back from attacking the Mehdi Army in Najaf yesterday, out of respect for the Muslim sabbath. But, in Karbala, clashes were reported and explosions heard near two of the city's most important shrines. Six members of a family, including three children aged two, four and five, were killed overnight in Najaf when their home was hit, apparently by US mortar fire.

In his sermon, Mr Sadr condemned President Bush for the alleged abuses inside Abu Ghraib. "What sort of freedom and democracy can we expect from you [Americans] when you take such joy in torturing Iraqi prisoners?" Mr Sadr asked. "America claims that it is fighting terrorism, and not sponsoring it, and is spreading justice and equality among peoples and freedom and democracy. Now it is doing the same acts done by the small devil Saddam and in the same place where Iraqis were oppressed."

Addressing President Bush directly, he said: "Your apology is not enough. This crime is not tackled by an apology. Those who did this crime should be punished the same way in the same place."

Mr Sadr enjoys limited popularity among Iraqi Shia but, by seizing on the Abu Ghraib scandal, he may be able to tap in to a rich seam anti-US sentiment.

By taking on Mr Sadr and his militia in the holy cities, as the Americans appear to be doing after Thursday's offensive, they risk giving him a popular appeal he does not have at the moment

Extraordinary scenes as Iraqi Shia were invited to pray in Sunni mosques yesterday were evidence of how deeply the Americans have misunderstood Iraqi society. Only months ago, the US was issuing dire warnings of civil war between Iraq's Sunni and Shia. Instead, the two communities have united against the occupiers.