Leading Islamic clerics hacked to death by crowd

A CROWD yesterday hacked to death two leading Islamic clerics in a shrine in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf where rival Shi’ite factions had gathered for talks.

One of the dead, the son of a former Grand Ayatollah, had only recently returned from exile in London.

“People attacked and killed both of them inside the mosque,” said Ali Assayid Haider, a mullah who travelled from Basra for the meeting of Islamic leaders.

The killings took place at the gold-domed Mosque of Ali, one of the holiest Shi’ite shrines. Najaf is the seat of the Shi’ite’s ayatollahs, or spiritual leaders.

Witnesses said leading mullahs were holding a meeting to discuss control of the shrine. The mosque has been under the supervision of Haider al Kadar, widely disliked because of his role as a member of President Saddam Hussein’s Ministry of Religion.

In a gesture of reconciliation, al Kadar was accompanied to the shrine by Abdul Majid al Khoei, a high-ranking Shi’ite cleric and son of one of the religion’s most prominent ayatollahs.

When the two men appeared at the shrine, members of another faction loyal to a different mullah, Mohammed Braga al Saddar, verbally assailed al Kadar.

Al Khoei pulled a gun and fired one or two shots. Conflicting eyewitness accounts had him firing bullets into the air and into the crowd.

Both men were then rushed by the crowd and hacked to death with swords and knives, witnesses said.

Al Khoei was among the most prominent of Iraq’s returned exiles. His father was the revered Shi’ite cleric Ayatollah Abul-Qassim al-Khoei, who was the religion’s spiritual leader during a Shi’ite uprising against Saddam in 1991.

Following the uprising, the son defected to London, where he headed a philanthropic group. Al Khoei returned to Iraq and arrived in Najaf on April 3.

Al Khoei and other former exiles had been trying to restore order in Najaf, the third-holiest city for the world’s nearly 120 million Shi’ites behind Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.

US forces had taken control of all of Najaf except the shrine, where Iraqi hard-liners were holed up in a bid to keep the Americans out.

Al Khoei said earlier this month local clerics were trying to negotiate a deal in which Iraqi loyalists would leave the mosque in return for safe passage out of the city. He also said he urged his followers to cooperate with coalition troops.

The mosque holds the tomb of the Shi’ites’ most beloved saint, Imam Ali Ibn Abu Talib, the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law.

With its silver-covered tomb, ceramic-ornamented walls and resplendent golden dome and minarets, the shrine is considered a treasure of Islamic art.

Najaf, whose name in Arabic means a high land, is 100 miles south of Baghdad on a desert plateau overlooking the world’s largest cemetery, where Shi’ites aspire to bury their dead.

Najaf also is a centre for scientific, literary and theological studies for the Islamic world.