An Iraqi cleric who led bloody rebellions against US troops but stayed out of public view in the last two years has made an unusually visible appearance in Turkey, which is raising its own profile as a mediator in the region.
Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr met about 70 fellow Iraqi Shiites in Istanbul, Turkey’s biggest city, on Saturday in what representatives described as a discussion of ways to contribute to Iraq’s future. General elections are expected toward the end of this year, and Iraq’s 275-member parliament has about 30 al-Sadr loyalists.
Although al-Sadr shunned the media at Saturday’s event at a hotel, his participation as well as a photograph of him seated with Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a meeting a day earlier in Ankara were a departure from his customary reclusiveness.
Al-Sadr has made announcements on his Web site and issued statements for Friday prayers usually relayed via aides. But he was last seen in the media when he gave a television interview with Al-Jazeera on March 29 last year. The last time he appeared in person in public was May 25, 2007, when he delivered a sermon in the Iraqi Shiite holy city of Kufa.
“We have put down our arms. Arms will not be raised, especially against the Iraqi soldiers,” Sheik Salah al-Obeidi, a spokesman for al-Sadr, said in Istanbul.
“However the resistance will continue,” he said. “There is economic, political and cultural resistance against the outside forces who are invading our land.”
After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, al-Sadr’s Shiite militia fought US troops intermittently until a ceasefire last May. Despite his wide appeal to segments of Iraq’s Shiite poor, al-Sadr was viewed as troublesome by the Shiite-led government and hundreds of his supporters were arrested on suspicion of involvement in Iran-linked militant cells.
Al-Sadr said last year that his withdrawal from public view was motivated in part by his desire to focus on his studies to become a mujtahid, or a religious authority. On Saturday, al-Obeidi said al-Sadr’s whereabouts were kept secret, possibly reflecting concern for the cleric’s safety.
“Turkey is a good, old friend,” he said. “Trusting that, we have no hesitations to travel in Turkey.”
Al-Sadr is widely thought to be based in Iran’s holy city of Qom.
Turkey, which has an Islamic-oriented government and a secular constitution, has held talks with a variety of groups in Iraq in an effort to help establish stability there.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS