Opposition leader returns after years in exile

The leader of the largest Iraqi Shi’ite Muslim group opposed to Saddam Hussein returned to Iraq today after two decades in exile, arriving to expectations that he will figure prominently in the future of the country he was kept from for so long.

Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, rolled across the Iranian frontier into Iraq at a desert border crossing that has been a no-man’s land for years.