Radical cleric Sadr back in Iraq

Radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr returned to his home city of Najaf in central Iraq after an absence abroad of about four years, a source in his movement said.

5 January 2011, 12:00am
by Rachel Zammit Cutajar

1 min read

Sadr had left Iraq at the end of 2006, though he is he has returned to stay.

Hundreds took to the streets to celebrate his return.

Sadr, the son of revered Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, has reportedly been pursuing religious studies in the Iranian holy city of Qom.

The cleric, who is said to be in his 30s, gained wide popularity among Shiites in Iraq in the months after the US-led invasion of 2003 and in 2004 his Mahdi Army militia battled US troops in two bloody conflicts.

In August 2008, he suspended the activities of his Mahdi Army, which once numbered in the tens of thousands, following major US and Iraqi assaults on its strongholds in Baghdad and southern Iraq in the spring of that year.

Sadr's bloc won 39 out of the 325 parliamentary seats in Iraq's 7 March polls, and has seven ministers in the national unity cabinet that was approved by parliament on 21 December.

Deputy speaker of parliament Qussai Abdel Wahab al-Suhail is a member of Sadr's bloc.

Sadr threw his weight behind Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki when the premier was tasked with forming a government following the 7 March vote.

Rachel Zammit Cutajar graduated in economics from the University of Malta...