IRAQ: Murders among the clergy

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Iraq’s Shiite clergy have been haunted by a series of murders, most of them unsolved, since April 2003, when Saddam Hussein’s ouster ended repression of the Shiite majority but also uncorked long-simmering tensions between rival Shiite families and their followers.

Nobody knows whether the latest victim gunned down Friday, an in-law of Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, was another target in this sinister war. There’s no question, though, that Riyadh Noori’s death will only increase anger among Sadr’s followers and his Mahdi Army militia, which have accused Iraqi and U.S. forces of targeting Sadrists in an offensive that began March 25.

Noori, a close aide to Sadr, was killed in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, which has been the scene of previous murders linked to the rivalry between Sadr’s followers and those of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council. The most infamous of those killings occurred April 10, 2003, when an angry mob hacked to death Sayed Majid Khoei during a visit to Najaf’s Imam Ali shrine.

Khoei, a Shiite cleric and the scion of a religious family that rivaled Sadr’s, had just returned to Iraq under protection of the United States after living in exile during Hussein’s regime. Noori, who ran Sadr’s office in Najaf, was suspected of involvement in the murder and was detained by U.S. forces in 2004 in connection with it. He was freed in 2005.

Last September, a prominent aide to Sadr was killed in Najaf, a murder believed to be linked to Sadr’s rivalry with SIIC, whose followers regard Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani as their leader. His killing followed the murders of four Sistani aides earlier in the year. Only one of the killings has been solved.

—Times staff writers in Baghdad

An Iraqi boy shouts slogans during Friday prayers in Baghdad’s Shiite enclave of Sadr City on April 11, 2008. Gunmen shot dead today Riyadh Noori, a top aide to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Iraq’s holy city of Najaf, sparking anger among his followers. Credit: AHMAD AL-RUBAYE /AFP / Getty Images

P.S. The Los Angeles Times issues a free daily newsletter with the latest headlines from the Middle East, the war in Iraq and the confrontation between the West and Islam. You can subscribe by registering at the website here, logging in here and clicking on the World: Mideast newsletter box here.