Iraq official appeals to Sadr on militias

Iraq’s top law enforcement official met Saturday with a radical Shiite cleric in an attempt to rein in marauding militias that have wrought havoc on large stretches of the country and carried out execution-style slayings of Sunni Arab men.

Authorities found the bodies of at least 23 such men, who were bound and bore signs of torture, scattered around the capital. Sunni insurgents also continued to stoke sectarian discord, killing 17 people and injuring 30 others in an apparently coordinated attack on a Shiite market town south of Baghdad. On a minibus in northern Baghdad, a man detonated a bomb strapped to his waist, killing four people and wounding 15.

Alarmed by the violence, a group of Shiite and Sunni Muslim clerics in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, issued a communique urging Iraqis to stop killing one another. The statement cited passages from the Koran.

“The blood, honor and wealth of Muslims cannot be touched by other Muslims,” it said. “He who kills a believer on purpose will go to hell and stay there forever. And God has prepared terrible torture for him in hell.”

Interior Minister Jawad Bolani’s two-hour meeting with Muqtada Sadr came as Shiite militiamen nominally loyal to the cleric’s cause fought with rivals south of Baghdad. In fighting Thursday and Friday, his forces took and held the southeastern provincial capital of Amarah in a political and tribal dispute that left at least 25 dead.

Bolani declined to disclose details of his meeting with Sadr in the southern city of Najaf, describing it afterward as routine. It came amid demands for a crackdown on armed gangs of young Shiite men whom some U.S. officials consider an even greater threat to Iraq’s long-term stability than Sunni Arab-led insurgents.

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has come under intense domestic and international pressure to rein in the militias, some of whom supported his political ascent this year. Maliki’s supporters warn that a heavy-handed approach to the militias could further erode support for a government that has lost much of its credibility.

Sunni attacks such as Saturday’s mortar and bomb strike on the mostly Shiite district of Mahmoudiya win Shiite militia groups public support. “Once we overcome terror, we can stop the militias,” said Abbas Bayati, a Shiite lawmaker. “We can’t protect the nation. The government cannot disarm the militias if they are a force that is protecting the people from terrorism.”

There have been signs that Maliki’s government is seeking to find ways to neutralize the militias. Shiite politicians say the government has enlisted Sadr to crack down on the more unruly groups acting in the name of his Al Mahdi army, a highly fractured militia for which he serves as spiritual leader.

“He’s not in favor of the presence of militias,” said Ghufran Saidi, one of at least 30 members of parliament allied with the Sadr movement. “He’s in favor of the Iraqi security forces. He opposes any individual who hurts the Iraqi people, even if he’s in the Mahdi army.”

The thirtysomething cleric issued a blunt statement against some of his followers Thursday after meeting with Maliki. “Some of the so-called groups affiliated with [Sadr’s Baghdad organization] have performed misconduct and shown bad discipline in an immoral manner,” it said. “If these groups do not behave properly ... then I will announce my aloofness and disassociation with them and ... uncover their names and expose their deeds.”

The gathering of clerics in Mecca was organized by the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference. Neither Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, spiritual leader of most Iraqi Shiites, nor Sadr sent delegates to the conference, but both endorsed the statement, which may be posted on mosque entrances.

A group of supposed Al Mahdi militiamen struck at a police station in Suwayrah, southeast of Baghdad, in an attempt to free men arrested on kidnapping-for-ransom charges. The men were chased off after U.S. forces arrived on the scene, said Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry.

Police in the Shiite port city of Basra arrested suspected members of two criminal gangs with militia ties allegedly operating kidnapping-for-ransom and oil-smuggling rackets. They confiscated tools believed to have been used to punch holes in oil pipelines, fake documents for transporting goods on fishing boats, and heavy weapons.

On Friday night, suspected Al Mahdi fighters near Hillah bombed an office of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which operates the rival Badr militia. U.S. forces clamped down and restored order, said Capt. Muthana Ahmad, a spokesman for the Hillah police.

daragahi@latimes.com

Times staff writer Saif Rasheed in Baghdad, special correspondent Saad Fakhrildeen in Najaf and special correspondents in Baghdad and Kirkuk and near Basra contributed to this report.