DOHA, Qatar - A mob stormed one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines in Iraq on Thursday and hacked to death two clerics, one of whom had returned to his country only last week with U.S. help to promote reconciliation.
The brutal assassination of Said Abdul Majid al-Khoei, son of a prominent former Shiite ayatollah, heightened concerns that the fall of Saddam Hussein could unleash a wave of sectarian disputes, power struggles and bloody score-settling.
The two clerics had gone to the Imam Ali mosque for a U.S.-endorsed reconciliation meeting.
It was unclear what had stirred the crowd to attack al-Khoei and the other cleric in the holy city of Najaf. Some cited fierce rivalries between Shiite factions over who will rule the city, while others accused Saddam loyalists and said that al-Khoei was seen as too pro-American.
In an interview last week with the Chicago Tribune in Najaf, al-Khoei, who had just returned from a 12-year exile in London, had spoken of trying to serve as a bridge between local leaders, clerics and the U.S. military to promote democracy in his native city.
"They don't have much experience with this here," he said, standing outside the local university townhouse where he conducted a constant stream of consultations on his mobile phone. "They tried to kill my father many times." He said many of his family members suffered greatly under Saddam: his father-in-law, brother-in-law and cousin were murdered.
The murders occurred inside the shrine that contains the gold-domed tomb of Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed and the first Shiite leader. Last week, Iraqi guerrillas had used it as a refuge in gun battles with U.S. forces, who eventually prevailed.
Witness accounts of the incident vary. Al-Khoei had reportedly gone to the mosque in a gesture of reconciliation, to meet with another cleric, Haider al-Kadar, who was seen as a loyalist of Saddam Hussein.
U.S. officials had tried to fly journalists in to see the meeting, but they arrived after the murders, seeing only bloodstains on the sidewalk.
The two clerics reportedly had been set upon together by a mob that entered the mosque with knives and swords. In one account, al-Khoei pulled out a gun and fired one or two shots before being overtaken.
"I don't know why they wanted his life," Ghanem Jawad, a colleague at the Khoei Foundation charity in London, told Al Jazeera television through his sobs. "He was most active in trying to bring together Islamic groups. He (was) such a good man, and he hated dictators and he hated corrupt governments."
Al-Khoei had been escorted in Najaf by an American who would identify himself only as "Dave, an employee of the U.S. government." Officials said there were no U.S. soldiers near the mosque at the time of the murders because of local sensitivities to entrance by non-Muslims.
Special Operations Forces from the U.S. 101st Airborne Division, which controls Najaf, launched an investigation into the killings Thursday evening. U.S. officials tried hard not to paint the incident as a blow to their hopes for a peaceful reconstruction in Iraq.
Al-Khoei's murder "is a reminder that Iraq is still dangerous in many places, and a reminder of how important it is for all of us to work to create a situation where Iraqis can express themselves freely, where all points of view can be expressed freely and without intimidation or violence," U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington.
Al-Khoei was the son of former Grand Ayatollah Said Abul Qassim Musawi al-Khoei, a revered spiritual leader for the minority Shiites at the time of their uprising against Hussein after the Persian Gulf war in 1991. He had issued a religious ruling opposed to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
After the uprising failed, the senior al-Khoei was placed under house arrest and forced to make a videotaped statement of support for Hussein. It was seen as a profound humiliation to the Shiites.
Said Abdul Majid al-Khoei was the only member of the immediate family to escape at that time. He went to London, where he ran a charity organization, and lived there until being brought to Najaf with the U.S. military on April 3.
Al-Khoei's father was the teacher of the current grand ayatollah of the Imam Ali Mosque, Said Ali al Sistani, who issued a fatwa last week requesting that Iraqis not interfere with U.S. forces. Since returning, al-Khoei had been trying to meet with Sistani but had not been successful.
While in Najaf, al-Khoei had been living with the 101st's Special Forces soldiers in a university complex on the outskirts of the city. Al-Khoei dressed in Western clothes, clearly influenced by his time in London.
The murders occurred amid fears of a power struggle for control of Najaf, one of the Shiites' holiest cities. It is about 100 miles south of Baghdad and has a population of half a million.
Some said the attacks had anti-Saddam overtones, blaming them on followers of a third cleric, Mohammed Baqer al-Sadr, who were furious at the presence of al-Kadar, the Saddam loyalist. Others blamed fighters loyal to Saddam, or others who wanted to stir up sectarian strife.
According to some Arab media accounts, al-Khoei and Baqer were two of three figures with big enough followings to vie for power in Najaf. While the U.S. clearly was supporting al-Khoei, Baqer reportedly had the backing of Iran, where he was living until recently.
The third figure was a former general in the Iraqi army, Nizar al-Khazraji, who had defected from Saddam's regime in the 1990s and was living in Denmark. Last fall, Danish police charged him with war crimes stemming from his actions involving the deaths of Iraqi citizens in the 1980s.
At that time, Human Rights Watch warned the United States against promoting people like Khazraji as future rulers of Iraq, saying that joining the U.S.-backed Iraqi opposition "cannot be a `get out of jail free card' for mass murder."
Al-Khoei could have made enemies in many camps. He may have angered Iran by not reflexively adhering to its wishes as other Shiite clerics do. And he had been critical of local Shiites who served in the Baath Party under Hussein, warning that they would try to come back and rule through a party with a different name.
After returning last week, he had spent his afternoons in Najaf discussing with old friends and townspeople how the city should be governed. He said many people asked him who would step forward to rule them in the city.
"You have to figure that out yourselves," he said he replied.
© 2003, Chicago Tribune.
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