Murder at the mosque

By CAHAL MILMO in NAJAF

Twelve years of exile running a charitable religious foundation in London could not have prepared Abdul Majid al-Khoei for this.

He took part in polite interfaith dialogues. He was one of the Muslim leaders who offered British Prime Minister Tony Blair advice on Islamic sensitivities.

Nothing could have hinted at what would happen yesterday - that he would be hacked to death at one of Islam's holiest shrines.

It was, by terrible irony, the shrine holding the silver-covered tomb of Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed, honoured as the first Islamic martyr.

And now martyrdom came to Mr Khoei, who had returned to Iraq from exile in Britain only two weeks ago to act as a peace broker.

Mr Khoei, whose father was the spiritual leader of Iraq's Shia Muslims, was slain at the Ali Mosque in Najaf, the third most sacred site for the world's 120 million Shias. He was dragged outside the building and set upon with knives and swords as he tried to defend himself by firing his gun.



The reasons for the killing remain unclear. Some said that Mr Khoei, a father of four, was the target of an assassination by Saddam Hussein loyalists. Others said he had been caught up in a revenge attack on a cleric, reviled for his connections to the Iraqi regime.

The murders took place shortly after 10am as Iraq's leading Shia mullahs gathered to decide control of the shrine, which Iraqi gunmen occupied during fighting for Najaf.

Mr Khoei arrived with Haider al-Kadar, the imam who had been in charge of the mosque and was widely disliked as a member of Saddam's Ministry of Religion. Their joint arrival was a gesture of reconciliation, said Mr Khoei's supporters.

"People attacked and killed both of them," said mullah Ali Assayid Haider.

Mr Khoei was one of Iraq's most prominent exiles and obvious target for anyone seeking to control Najaf. His father, the Grand Ayatollah Abulqasim al-Khoei, was the highest Shia religious authority in Iraq during the 1991 uprising against President Saddam. When the rebellion failed, Mr Khoei fled. His father died under house arrest in 1992.

He returned to his hometown of Najaf after answering the call for volunteers among exiled Iraqis to act as intermediaries for American and British forces.

He was last week credited with preventing a confrontation between United States Marines and Shias near the Ali mosque in Najaf.

Using a loudhailer, Mr Khoei calmed the crowd by denying that the Americans were going to enter the mosque as the troops backed away, their guns pointing down.

Friends said the cleric had assumed a prominent spiritual role, seeking to calm tensions between foreign troops and local Shias anxious to safeguard the sanctity of their holy places and also between rival factions. Last week he and other clerics were trying to negotiate a deal to give hardcore loyalists safe passage out of the city.

People with Mr Khoei suggested that the other cleric's presence sparked an insult from followers of a faction loyal to another mullah, Mohammed Braga al Saddar.

"Kadar was an animal," said Adil Adnan al-Moussawi. "The people were shouting they hate him, that he should not be here."

Mr Khoei was seen to pull out a gun. Conflicting witness accounts said he fired into the air and also into the crowd. Whatever happened, what followed was savage. Mr Khoei was shot inside the mosque. The crowd descended on the two men and dragged them outside, where they were cut down by attackers.

In London, aides said they believed the killing was an assassination by "members of the regime".

"We believe this was politically motivated - the actions of those within Saddam Hussein's regime who have targeted us," said a spokesman for Al-Khoei Foundation.

Sheikh Fazel al-Haidari, a dissident Shia cleric in Iraq, added: "We should not assume Saddam and his Baath party are finished."

The killings followed reports that a militia, backed by the American military, had been looting homes and businesses in Najaf.

Residents claimed the US-trained Iraqi Coalition of National Unity was taking control of the city in defiance of much of its population's allegiance to the man who succeeded Khoei's father, the Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali al-Sistani. The US military claimed earlier that the Ayatollah had urged Shias not to attack Allied forces.

Other sources suggested that yesterday's killing was due to intense suspicion among other Shia factions of Mr Khoei's rapid return to Iraq with the backing of the United States.

His supporters said that the Americans had given him authority to administer Najaf, a city of 500,000.

Just a few days earlier, he had pacified his countrymen with these words: "I said that I was an Iraqi who had been forced to leave but I had returned - a sign that things were now getting better and they were safe."


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Herald Feature: Iraq war