Najaf: Sadr requests the end of combat
The Shi'ite rebel chief Moktada Sadr ordered, Friday morning, that his militia surrender its arms.
He also asked them to leave the mausoleum of Ali in Najaf, in central Iraq, the most venerated site of Shi'ah Islam, and officially returned the mausleum to the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.
The radical imam Moktada Sadr yesterday accepted the peace initiative presented by Ali Sistani.
General Amer al- Daami, chief police assistant in Najaf, affirmed, after having invested the cellars of the tribunals put in place by Moktada Sadr in the old city of Najaf, having found "several bodies of civilians and police officials executed, mutilated, and burned".
According to the notes of a journalist, there were some 25 bodies with blackened and swollen skin.
The militamen had, earlier, put up their arms, however, without giving them to the police, prefering to store them in caches.
Ali Sistani's initiative did not mention the remission of the militia's arms t the Iraqi authorities.
"The Americans thought to exterminate the Army of the Mahdi, but our combattants are always there. They are going to be able to return to work, but the Army of the Mahdi will continue", declared Sheik Ahmad Chaibani, the spokesman of Moktada Sadr.
According to him, the Sistani plan stipulates that the "cities of Najaf and Koufa should be disarmed and that all armed elements in these cities should leave never to return."
"The Iraqi police are responsible for re- establishing security and peace in the two cities and the multinational Force should withdraw", continued the text. "The Iraqi government is going to pay compensation to those who suffered during the crisis", according to the same source.
"All the parties and political, social, and ideological movements are part of the process proceeding general elections, to reach total sovereignty, and to be able to create and environment favorable to this process.
The various points of the plan are all from the Marjaiya, the highest Shi'ite authority. I am ready to put to them work with gratitude", Moktada Sadr writes in his own hand at the end of the document that he signed and stamped.
Up to the present, the extremist dignitary, who will remain at liberty, had always refused to take part in the political process, accsing the interim government of being under the supervision of the occupiers.
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