Sadr no longer suspected of killing Abdul Majid al-Khoei
24/10/2011 11:26Baghdad, Oct. 24 (AKnews) - The murder investigation against radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the case of the killing of Abdul Majid al-Khoei in April 2003 is over.
The Supreme Judicial Council said it had no evidence or against Sadr and therefore had no reason to interrogate him.
Spokesman Abdul Sattar Bayraktar even denied that an investigation ever took place. "No lawsuits exist originally against the leader of the Sadrist movement in the Iraqi courts," Bayraktar said.
According to Bayraktar, an arrest warrant for Sadr in 2006 had been issued by the British Criminal Court, not by the Iraqi judiciary.
Abdul Majid al-Khoei, the son of the famous Shia cleric Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei, and a number of his supporters were ambushed and killed in the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf in April 2003. Sadr had been the main suspect and fled to Iran in 2007.
After receiving guarantees from the Iraqi government that he will not be arrested, Sadr returned to his stronghold Najaf on in August after more than three years in his Iranian exile.
Haidar al-Khoei, the eldest son of late Abdul Majid al-Khoei, was surprised of the denial of an investigation. "How does the government deny the existence of an arrest warrant that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki mentioned himself prior to the elections?"
Haidar al-Khoei revealed last year that his family filed its own lawsuit against Sadr for the killing of his father at the Court of Najaf back in 2003.
Reported by Mouhammed al-Tayyeb
RN/CU/AKnews
