U.S. releases senior al-Sadr aide
BAGHDAD, Iraq – The U.S. military Wednesday released a senior member of Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement at the request of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
The decision, officials said, was made with the hope of easing tensions between al-Sadr’s al-Mahdi militia and U.S.-led forces in Iraq. Sheik Ahmed Shibani, who had been in prison for 2 1/2years, was handed over to the office of the Shiite prime minister.
“In consultation with the prime minister and following his request, coalition leaders determined that Sheikh Shibani, who was detained since 2004, could play a potentially important role in helping to moderate extremism and foster reconciliation in Iraq,” U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said in a statement.
Al-Sadr’s militia repeatedly had demanded the release of Shibani, a onetime spokesman to al-Sadr who was jailed by U.S. forces in September 2004 in the Shiite shrine city of Najaf, after a month-long uprising by the militia against the Americans.
Relations have remained tense between the U.S. military and al-Sadr, especially since the start last month of the latest security crackdown in Baghdad. Al-Mahdi members have chafed at the presence of U.S. soldiers in Sadr City, the large Shiite slum in Baghdad that has served as their home base. Joint U.S. and Iraqi security forces also have detained hundreds of al-Mahdi members as part of the effort to stem sectarian violence between Sunni Arab insurgents and Shiite death squads.
While the al-Sadr forces largely have abided by the security plan, clashes erupted Monday between U.S. soldiers and gunmen in Hurriyah, a Shiite neighborhood in western Baghdad.
Forces expand crackdown
Meanwhile, some 1,600 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers pushed into a dangerous Sunni Arab area of west Baghdad on Wednesday, searching houses in the expanding security crackdown.
The U.S. military said the armor-backed force that swept into the Ghazaliyah and Amariyah neighborhoods detained 31 people and found two weapons caches that included containers of nitric acid and chlorine, a toxic material used recently by Sunni insurgents in bomb attacks.
No casualties were reported during the first day of the operation, which included about 1,100 U.S. soldiers and 500 Iraqi troops.
The move was certain to ease tensions with Shiite Muslims in districts to the east. They had complained bitterly of being hit by mortar shells that Sunni fighters fired from Ghazaliyah at will.
Police, meanwhile, said children had been used as decoys in a weekend car bombing in which the driver gained permission to park in a busy Shiite shopping area after he pointed out he was leaving his children in the back seat.
The bomb was exploded with the children still in the car, police said, perhaps signaling a new tactic by insurgents who are seeking to foment all-out civil war between Shiites and Sunnis.