AL-SADR IN HIS OWN WORDS

Rome, 19 Jan. (AKI) - In a long interview with Rome-daily La Repubblica published Friday, Iraqi Shiite radical leader Moqtada al-Sadr said he has never trusted prime minister Nouri al-Maliki nor his predecessor Iyad Allawi, whom he described as the brains behind a US-backed plot to destroy him and his militia. Al-Sadr said a crackdown on him and his al-Mahdi Army "has already kicked off." "Last night they arrested over 400 of my people. But it is not us they want to destroy, it's Islam," he said.

A prominent aide of al-Sadr was arrested by Iraqi and United States forces in Baghdad on Friday. The US military said the man arrested was a senior death squad leader. But a spokesman for al-Sadr's political office told Reuters the man detained was Abdul Hadi al Darraji, a media spokesman.

Friday's arrest follows a crackdown, announced by Iraqi prime minister Nouri al Maliki on the al-Mahdi Army, involving 400 arrests this week, and coincides with the arrival in Basra of US defence secretary Robert Gates to meet the US commander in Iraq, General George Casey.

In the interview to the Italian paper, al-Sadr also denied that members of his militia have infiltrated the army and police.

"The exact opposite has happened: it is our militia which is full of spies. It is actually very easy to infiltrate an army of the people."

The Shiite leader also denied that the guards who chanted his name and insulted late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein during his execution had nothing to do with him.

"No, they were not my men," he said. "Those were people paid to disparage me, to make me appear like the person respondible for the hanging."

While Saddam Hussein was standing on the trapdoor with the noose being fastened around his neck on 30 December last year, guards insulted him and chanted the name of Moqtada al-Sadr. A total 14 witnesses were reportedly present at the execution at the former military intelligence headquarters in Baghdad's highly fortified Green Zone, and some reports alleged the Shiite leader was among them.

(Ebc/Aki)

Jan-19-07 12:03

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Original in Italian

Machine translation

FOREIGN COUNTRIES

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Stampa

Moqtada speaks to the Sadr: “The man of the USA is Allawi, not Maliki”
The alive leader of the intégriste military service by now to the spot

“A secret army against of we
but the sciiti ones will know to resist "

FROM OUR ENVOY RENATO CAPRILE

"Un esercito segreto contro di noi
ma gli sciiti sapranno resistere"" src="este_9583330_18210.jpg" width="200">

Moqtada To the Sadr

BAGDAD - It is felt braccato and one hides. It never more does not sleep of one night in the same bed. Someone of its faithful has already turned it the shoulders. It has even transferred the family in a secret place. Moqtada to the Sadr feels that the fine ones is near. Too many enemies, too many infiltrate to you between its people. Nevertheless it does not have to us with to the Maliki that considers little more of a marionette, how much with Yad Allawi, the former ones premier, on which the Americans would not have never stopped to head. He would be he the true director of the operation that aimed to cancel from the face of the Iraq he and its army of the Mahdi.

Com'è that to the Maliki, in whose government until little time makes was quite six ministers of its current, without warning it is shrewed that they are the religious military services, and above all its, the true problem to resolve?

“Between me and Abu Assara (the “father of Assara”, name of the daughter of Maliki, ndr) not never has been a lot feeling. I have always suspected that it was maneuvered and never they are not trusted me he. There are only meets to you in a pair of occasions. In the last one of which to before it has said me “you are the dorsal thorn of the country”, and then it has confessed to me of “obliged” being to fight to us. Obliged, it understands”.

The fact remains that against its people is in order to release the iron fist.

“While already it is released. Yesterday night they have already arrested beyond four hundred of mine. He is not we that they want to destroy, but the Islam. We are only an obstacle. For hour we will not oppose resistance”.

He wants to say that you will deliver the crews?

“During the muharram, (the sacred month in which the martyrdom of Hussein, happened beyond six centuries is commemorated ago, ndr) the Corano forbids us to kill. That they also kill to us, therefore. For a true believer not there is moment better than this in order to die: the Paradise is assured. But God is generous: not moriremo all. After the muharram riparliamo some”.

There is who supports that army and police are widely infiltrate to you from its and that the marines by themselves they will not make us never to disarm to you.

“True E' the exact contrary: it is our military service that pullula of spies, On the other hand in a people army us does not want a lot to be infiltrated. And they are just these that blotting itself of dishonourable actions have discredited the Mahdi. There are at least four exercises ready to get loose itself against of we. A “shadow” of which it is not never spoken, trained in great secret in the giordano desert the military services Americans. And then there is that private of Allawi, infedele that soon it will succeed to Maliki, that is being prepared in the former military airport of Muthanna. Then there are peshmerga curdi and at last the regular troops Americans”.

If it is true what it says, you do not have some hope to resist.

“We Are in many also. We represent the majority of the country that he does not want that the Iraq, as instead it dreams Allawi, becomes one Be lay, servant of the western powers”.

From a week it is officially in the view-finder. The government supports that without their leaders the religious military services are militarily more weak people.

“Of they are aware. For this I have transferred my family in a sure place. I have even made testament and I move myself continuously making so that they are in little to knowing exactly where I find myself. But even if you had to die, the Mahdi would continue to exist. The men can be victims of a murder, the faith and the ideas not”.

It has been said that in means to the present crowd to the execution of Saddam there was also she. And true?

“E' one total sciocchezza. If pits be them, would have killed also me. As far as Saddam, I do not have sure I plant for the man who has massacred my family and my people to tens of migliaia. That I would have only executed it on a public public square because all the world saw”.

If it not were, she denies that in that one she knows it was the full load of its?

“Not, they were not my men. She was paid people in order to discredit to me. In order it makes me to appear like the true one in charge of that hanging. The test is in the fact, enough to riascoltare the audio, than in reciting my prayer they have omitted some fundamental passages. Roba that a child to Sadr City would not have never made. The objective was to make to pass Moqtada like the true enemy of the Sunnites. And there are resolutions. Time makes has been received with all the honors in Saudi Arabia. But endured after that putting in scene under the scaffold, my megaphone, to the Zarqani, that it was in pilgrimage to the Mecca has been arrested. A too much explicit way end in order makes me to understand that I was not more in the list of the friends”.

In any case the war between you and the Sunnites continuous.

“True E' that we are all Muslims and all sons of the same country but they must before take the distances from the saddamisti, from the radical groups, the men of Bin Laden beyond ribadire theirs “not” to the Americans. It would only be enough that the ulema our conditions accepted these. They have not still made it”.

Possible that not there is other that blood in the future of the Iraq?

“If the future is a country divided in three, it does not seem to me are alternatives. E' that that it wants Bush in order to control to us better, sure not what they wish the iracheni. To my warning there is a single possibility because solution is arrived to one: the immediate withdrawal American”.


(19 January 2007)