Radical cleric al-Sadr returns to Iraq as hero

Radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr returned yesterday to Iraq for a hero’s welcome in his stronghold of Najaf after nearly four years outside the country, an AFP correspondent said.

“Moqtada al-Sadr has returned to his home in Najaf. He arrived about 3 p.m. with several leaders from the Sadr movement,” a source in his movement said, adding cleric Sadr was not visiting but had returned to stay.

Hundreds of supporters took to the streets of Al-Hanana neighbourhood in Najaf, the central Iraq shrine city where cleric Sadr’s home is located, to celebrate the cleric’s return watched on by security forces.

Mr Sadr, who wore the black turban of a “sayyid,” or descendent of the Prophet Mohammed, visited the shrine of Imam Ali about 5 p.m., with a group of grey-clad bodyguards in tow.

He is to meet Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, later in the day, according to his movement.

Cleric Sadr, whose forces led a fierce insurgency against US forces in the years after the 2003 American-led invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein, had left Iraq at the end of 2006.

The son of revered Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, Sadr had 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.

Known for the black “sayyid” and beard to match, the young cleric was identified by the Pentagon in 2006 as the biggest threat to stability in Iraq.

His militia became the most active and feared armed Shiite group, blamed by Washington for death-squad killings of thousands of Sunnis.

But 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.

Following the ceasefire, US military commanders praised him, saying his action has been instrumental in helping bring about a significant decrease in the levels of violence across Iraq.

Despite only rare appearances in public, the cleric is idolised by millions of Shiites, especially in the shrine city of Najaf in central Iraq where he has his headquarters and the impoverished Baghdad neighbourhood of Sadr City.