An aide to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said the militant leader instructed his followers late Thursday to hand control of a revered shrine to top religious authorities in Iraq.
| Whatever happened to "victory or death"? |
| It turned into "Victory or a nice quiet place in the country with good takeout near-by." |
A top al-Sadr aide, Aws al-Khafaji, told the pan-Arab Al-Jazeera television station that the cleric asked his militia to give control of the Imam Ali Shrine compound to officials from the office of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite Muslim cleric. The government had called on al-Sadr's followers to disarm, evacuate the shrine and disband their militia or Iraqi forces would storm the holy site and wipe them out.
| They saw all those Kurds, who weren't impressed by the size of their turbans... |
Al-Arabiya television showed a copy of a letter al-Sadr reportedly sent to his followers late Thursday. The handwritten letter had al-Sadr's office's seal, but not his signature, the station said.
| "I didn't sign it, so it's not binding, so I can do anything I want." |
"I call on the religious authority again to receive the shrine so that it won't be taken by the hands of the enemy and of treason. I have offered it to you before and you have refused before the (latest) incidents," the letter read. However, al-Sadr refused to disband the militia, according to the letter, saying it belonged to Imam Mahdi, the Shiite messiah. "Let everyone know that this army is the Imam Mahdi's base, and I have no right to ever disband it," the letter said.
| "I'm only runnin' it for him, see?" |
It also rejected any political role for al-Sadr's followers. "I will never take part in any political work as along as the occupation is there. I will continue, all my life, to build Iraq, its freedom, independence and liberation," the letter said.
| What about all those dead guys who believed in you? Wotta putz. |
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