The Najaf ceasefire raises questions about when—and if—Moqtada al-Sadr will ever face trial on charges of murder and theft
Khalid Mohammed / AP
Iraqis express their support for militant cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the center of Najaf on Thursday
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Melinda Liu
Newsweek
Updated: 7:29 p.m. ET May 27, 2004
May 27 - Many questions remain about today’s “peace deal” between Coalition troops and renegade Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Najaf. After weeks of bloody conflict that’s left hundreds of rebels dead, Sadr’s Mahdi Army militiamen began withdrawing from the center of Iraq’s holy city. Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman Dan Senor confirmed that Iraqi security forces would take over control of government buildings and police stations occupied by Sadr’s militia, and Coalition soldiers would gradually pull back.
Still, no one seemed to know if or when Sadr would disband his militia, or surrender to face charges which accuse him, among other things, of involvement in the April 2003 murder of moderate Shiite cleric Abdel Majid al-Khoei. Both were unshakeable demands of U.S. authorities in early April. But subsequent weeks of debilitating violence—and the looming June 30 transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis—may have reshaped priorities for the Coalition. Now, it seems, Sadr himself will negotiate the future status of his militia and his arrest warrants with Shiite political and religious figures.
Will Sadr get off the hook? One of several Shiite figures striving to mediate in the conflict, Mohammed al-Musawi, said the deal involves transforming the Mahdi Army into a “political organization” and delaying Sadr’s prosecution until an elected government takes office after elections early next year.
Even if Sadr gives himself up to Iraqi authorities after June 30, as some sources say he is willing to do, many Iraqis now question whether he will—or should—be brought to trial. In an opinion poll last month, 31 percent of Iraqi respondents said they supported the pudgy-faced militant cleric, making him the third-most popular leader in the country. Today one Iraqi Governing Council member, Abdul-Karim Mahoud al-Mohammedawi, warned that Sadr’s arrest would simply trigger ''an unending revolution.''
For his part, yesterday’s U.S. capture of his close aide and brother-in-law Riyadh al-Nouri helped prod Sadr toward compromise. Nouri has been heavily involved in the day-to-day coordination of Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia. Like Sadr, Nouri is also named in an arrest warrant for the April 2003 murder of the pro-U.S. cleric, Khoei.
The original arrest warrant for Sadr, related to the murder of Khoei and two other Iraqis, was signed way back on Aug. 20 by a Najaf investigating judge. For months it languished in the hands of Coalition authorities who dithered over when and how to nab the cleric. Last fall a secret plan to nab Sadr was scuttled at the eleventh hour by U.S. officials who were advised by other Shiite leaders that such a move would merely enhance the prestige of the junior religious leader. Recently a senior American general in Iraq expressed regret that Sadr wasn’t arrested then, before he became a nationwide symbol of resistance to the U.S. occupation.
Even after the first warrant was signed, Sadr allegedly continued to commit new offenses. Two additional warrants were signed, according to a Coalition legal adviser familiar with the charges. One was related to Sadr's late 2003 attempt to seize control of Shiite holy shrines and his group's seizure of Muslim tithes, or khums-zakat, collected by Najaf mosques, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dinars, or several hundred dollars.
Then in January, two guards loyal to Sadr opened fire on a taxi speeding past his home as it carried a pregnant woman and her relatives to a nearby hospital because she was about to give birth. The woman and two family members died and another relative was injured in the shooting, which Sadr is believed to have ordered. Surviving relatives of the victim initially lodged a complaint. but later they retracted it "after receiving death threats," said the CPA legal adviser. Even so, that didn’t stop a third arrest warrant from being issued.
The tempo and intensity of violence by Sadr loyalists escalated further, alarming Coalition authorities. On March 12, dozens of armed Mahdi Army members—as many as 100 according to one report—descended on the squalid southern village of Qawliya, which means "gypsy" in Arabic. Sadr's followers had first intended to abduct a woman from the village and try her in a religious court—declared illegal by the Coalition—on charges of prostitution. Qawliya, a rabbits' warren of some 150 brick and concrete homes, was notorious for its brothels, alcohol, gun-running and other illicit activities.
In the fighting that ensued between Sadr supporters and villagers, more than 20 locals died, according to a Coalition legal adviser. The militiamen “used mortars, RPGs and even bulldozers to lay waste to the village,” he told NEWSWEEK. It didn't end there. Militiamen, along with rogue Iraqi police, allegedly detained and tortured 18 of the surviving villagers in an illegal prison in Diwaniyah province. The detainees, who said they had been beaten, were later freed by Coalition authorities, the legal adviser said.
An investigation into the incident was opened. Meanwhile the nature of the Mahdi Army's attack convinced some Coalition officials that Sadr's misbehavior was a destabilizing threat, not something that could continue to be overlooked for political reasons.
No one was at greater risk for investigating Sadr than the young Shia investigating judge in Najaf, Raid Juhi, who has received death threats. The Coalition legal adviser insisted that Juhi began looking into Khoei’s killing entirely on his own, "without us knowing about it. In the beginning there was no consultation. The killing was a tremendously traumatic event in Najaf and people began coming to him to give statements about it." In early April the judge appeared at an unannounced press conference inside Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone to brief reporters, on condition that he not be photographed.
A neatly groomed man with intense dark eyes, Juhi calmly presented the following account of murder and mayhem inside the fabled gilt-domed shrine of Imam Ali. The crime was a triple homicide. The victims were the Western-friendly Ayatollah Khoei, who'd returned from exile under U.S. auspices, and two companions, Haider al-Kilidar and Maher al-Yaseri. Khoei arrived in Najaf on April 10, 2003; the three men went to the shrine to pay respects.
The first sign of trouble erupted while they were in the shrine-keeper's office. A mob gathered and began shouting for them to leave. Khoei tried to calm them using the public-address system, but there was no electricity. Soon the crowd began attacking the visitors by throwing shoes and turbas, the small stonelike objects to which worshippers touch their foreheads while praying. "Gunshots were heard. Khoei took out his pistol and shot two bullets in the air to try to calm the crowd," the judge said.
Bullets began flying in all directions. In the 30-minute melee Maher was wounded, but did not die instantly. Khoei was shot twice and wounded by an exploding hand grenade; he lost two fingers. Shooting continued. Some people fled from the shrine-keeper's office.
At that point a representative from Sadr's organization appeared with a loudspeaker, demanding an end to the shooting and declaring that Khoei and Kilidar be tried in an Islamic court. Khoei had little choice. By this time Yaseri had died and members of the mob started to kick and trample his corpse.
Khoei and Kilidar were taken to the southern Bab al-Kibla gate. There the crowd beat Kilidar to death with an iron bar. Khoei managed to make his way to the door of Sadr's office, presumably hoping to seek protection from the mob. He banged on the door, but to no avail. He was stabbed by several people and lost consciousness. Sympathizers tried to carry him away.
The mob discovered him, passed out, on the steps of a bookshop. "Some people asked Sadr if he agreed to see Khoei and he said 'no, take him away'," said the judge. When Sadr’s followers asked the militant cleric what he wanted them to do with Khoei, back came what the judge said was Sadr’s chilling response: "Take him away and kill him in your special way."
The mob pulled Khoei from the shop and dragged him by the feet down the street, down concrete stairs, his head thudding on each one. Some 50 yards from the shrine, one of Sadr's followers finally took his Kalashnikov rifle and fired one shot into the exile's head. Later Kilidar's body was discovered, decapitated, its jaw broken. Sympathizers washed the bodies in the Muslim custom, and hastily buried them.
But how to investigate the crime? "As you know there weren't any courts at the time the crime was committed," the judge told journalists, "We only started working on May 18." To begin with he collected witnesses’ accounts, relatives' statements and affidavits from people injured in the incident.
In order to prove that the victims were stabbed, the judge ordered the exhumation of the bodies—fully two months after the killing—so that proper autopsies could be conducted at Najaf University Hospital. "The findings conformed with the witnesses' statements,” said Juhi, “So we got to the point of issuing more warrants.” Thirteen people had been detained immediately after Khoei’s murder, so Juhi signed a second set of warrants—12 in all—in August.
One was for Moqtada al-Sadr. it wasn’t until early April that CPA head Paul Bremer revealed the existence of the warrants and vowed that Sadr would be captured if he didn’t surrender first. That ignited uprisings by armed Shiite militants in several southern cities, as well as in Baghdad’s Sadr City. After weeks of bloodshed, today’s announcement of a Najaf ceasefire offers the prospect of an end to the violence. But will it be a lasting peace—and, if so, at what price?
