February 7, 2006

The Sadrist Nahrain Net website quotes anonymous sources in Iraqi Parliament who accused American C.I.A. agents of abducting the second secretary of the Iranian embassy in Baghdad. The sources added that they did not rule out the participation of Iranian Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK), a militant group opposed to the Islamic regime in Iran, in the kidnapping of the Iranian diplomat, in coordination with C.I.A. elements. Iraqi governmental officials with strong ties to Iran had made repeated demands in the past to deport Iranian opposition members based in Iraq, including the MEK, whom they accuse of "involvement in terrorist activities against the Iraqi people." Iraqi government spokesman Ali Al-Dabbagh repeated these demands last week after the MEK published a list with the names of 31 thousand Iraqis it claimed were agents of the Iranian regime and were receiving salaries from Iran. Al-Malaf reports that six other Defense Ministry officers thought to involved in the operation were arrested Wednesday, in addition to the four officer who were detained earlier for investigation. Foreign Minister Hoshiar Zebari stated today during a press conference in Baghdad that the detained officers are "suspected to be connected to a governmental party." Al-Malaf also reports the eruption of a crisis between senior officials at the ministries of Interior and Defense in light of the abduction of the Iranian diplomat, according to an unnamed source in the Interior Ministry, after Defense Ministry officials refused to comment on the incident. It should be noted that Sunni officers dominate the Defense Ministry, while the Interior Ministry is dominated by Shi’ites, which partly explains the tensions and the exchanged accusations.

Basrah citizens are complaining from the proliferation of monuments and murals of Ayatollah Khomeini, the deceased leader of the Islamic revolution in Iran, on the main streets of Basrah, Sot Al-Iraq reports. Citizens said that huge murals of Khomeini adorn the northern gate of Basrah near Garmat Ali, as well as main streets and intersections, such as the Istiqlal, Watan and Tammouz streets, with many of them bearing signatures of ruling Shi’ite political parties such as SCIRI, the Da’wa or the Fadhila parties . Abu Fuad (Shi’ite), a resident of the Jumhouriya district said he finds the murals "offensive" since he lost one of his children in 1987 when his house in Basrah was bombed by Iranian troops. He said Shi’ite political parties should not overlook the thousands of innocent civilians who were killed in the war by Iran. Ibrahim Al-Doseri, 54, a resident of Fao, also criticized Shi’ite political parties for closing a museum in Basrah that paid homage to thousands of victims of Iranian bombardment during the eight-year Iraq-Iran war. Al-Doseri also complained that people with his views in Basrah were harassed and targeted by Shi’ite political parties and militias with ties to Iran, or accused of being sympathetic to the former regime or "enemies of the sect."

Muthanna Governor Mohammed Ali Al-Hassaani said that a sandstorm last Sunday resulted in knocking down a mural of the late Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq Al-Sadr in Rumaitha, and that the police "respectfully returned the mural to its former position." Sadrist MP Bahaa’ Al-A’raji had accused the police commander in the governorate of removing the mural, and his statements resulted in forming a committee of the police and governorate officials to investigate the incident. The governor added that Al-A’raji’s statements caused the recent outbreak of violence between Sadrist and Mahdi Army elements and the police force, which is dominated by commanders from SCIRI.

Sot Al-Iraq also attacks British Channel 4 for producing the documentary "Iraq’s Death Squads" which investigates the links between high-ranking Shi’ite politicians and sectarian death squads in Iraq that have killed hundreds of Sunni civilians. The website claims that "the Ba’athist Mohammed Al-Daini hired this channel to produce a fabricated film with millions of dollars stolen from the mouths of hungry Iraqis, paid to this famous channel that is known in Britain for airing pornographic movies." The Shi’ite United Iraqi Alliance bloc in Iraqi parliament recently started a campaign to strip Sunni MP Mohammed Al-Daini from his parliamentary immunity because of what it described as his "sectarian statements and his support for terrorist groups."

The Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq issues statement No. 371 condemning "the attempts of certain political parties to implement Article 140 of the constitution to deport a large number of residents from a known component from the Iraqi city of Kirkuk," referring to recent statements of Kurdish politicians calling for the deportation of Arabs from southern and central Iraq who were settled in Kirkuk under Saddam’s regime as part of his arabization policies. The association acknowledges the problem of Kirkuk but argues that "exploiting the presence of the occupier to score illicit gains, especially when the international climate is not in the favor of these groups, will only result in actions they would regret later on."

The Haqq Agency reports ongoing clashes at a Sunni enclave in the Shia-majority Amil district, south of Baghdad. Sunni gunmen had "freed" the Aqtab Al-Arba’a Mosque last night after it was raided and closed by Interior Ministry Commandos two days ago, and the website claims that Mahdi Army militiamen supported by governmental troops "re-occupied" the mosque again this evening and hoisted Shi’ite flags on its roof. Eyewitnesses had claimed that several civilians were killed and injured in the clashes over the last few days and that Interior Ministry Commandos raided and burned several residences in the Janabat enclave.