by Mohamad Aburous
On December
29th, hundreds of occupation and collaborator regime troops stormed
the residence and the office of imam Ahmad Hassani Baghdadi, in order to arrest
him. Imam Baghdadi was absent and the troops occupied the buildings until
January 1st.
Baghdadi
one of the major Iraqi Shiite references, leading a Shiite religious forum
(Hawza) in Najaf.
The
background of this attempt was the fatwa of Baghdadi issued 10 days earlier
concerning the elections in Iraq, calling them “illegitimate”, being “held
under the presence of a foreign occupation”. The elections “will deliver a
cover for the occupation forces to disguise there political poisons with nice
names and coloured flags”. Baghdadi called for a total boycott of the voting.
Baghdadi
defended the Iraqi resistance and refused its medial characterisation as “Sunni”,
saying: “There is no Sunni triangle or Shiite square! There definitions were
created by the occupation forces, in order to falsify the facts and to defame
the resistance, which is active in all the parts of Iraq”. He supported the Iraqi armed resistance ” which represents the Iraqi
willing to fight for liberation and national sovereignty” and which “proved its
efficiency in guiding the political course in Iraq and in sabotaging Zionist
plans in the region”.
All the
Iraqi national forces and religious leaderships denounced the attack on
Baghdadis residence. In a symbolic act, Imam Muqtada Sadre visited Baghdadi in
his residence after the withdrawal of the troops to express his solidarity.
