Saturday, May 31, 2003
Top Iraqi Shiite group disarms
Agence France-Presse Najaf (Iraq), May 31
The military wing of the main Shiite movement in Iraq has disarmed, as efforts focus on political struggle to end the US occupation, the leader of the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI) said in an interview.
With two weeks left before US forces impose a ban on weapons, Mohammed Baqer Hakim said the Badr brigade, which boasted as many as 15,000 militiamen, had given up its heavy weaponry.
"The Badr forces are no longer armed; they were armed because they were fighting the regime" of Saddam Hussein, he said.
"But now the regime has fallen, the Badr forces are not armed... It has no tanks, no artillery guns or other heavy weapons," Hakim said at SAIRI headquarters in his hometown of Najaf, 150 km south of Baghdad.
However, Hakim hinted the force, elements of which have filtered back to Iraq from neighbouring Iran from where they had carried out raids on the ousted Baath regime, still carried light arms.
"The Iraqi people must have the ability to defend themselves against unidentified forces who continue to kill them," he said in the interview on Friday.
The US-British coalition has announced that all Iraqis would need a licence to carry a gun from June 15 from when heavy weapons are outlawed for political groups, apart from Kurds.
© Hindustan Times Ltd. 2002. Reproduction in any form is prohibited without prior permission