Sunni Fundamentalists Protest arrests of Clergy
500 Sunni Islamists demonstrated in the streets of Baghdad on Friday, representing the Higher Islamic Institute and other Muslim groups, and demanding the release of Sunni clergymen imprisoned by the Americans. They prayed on the street before the Coalition HQ. Shaykh Abd al-Sattar al-Janabi announced after he had sought a meeting with a Coalition official, “We want them to release the persons who are in charge of our mosques and then they should leave the country.” Sunni clergymen also tried to tell the Coalition, “Release Sunni clergy, and instead imprison those assassinate Sunni clerics!”
They accused the US of repressing Iraqi Sunnism.
The Higher Islamic Institute is based at Um al-Tubul Mosque in West Baghdad.
The prayer leader of the Hayy al-Washash Mosque in the capital, Ibrahim al-Mashhadani and his brother and a friend were cut down by machine gun fire as they left the mosque after dawn prayers recently. Al-Sharq al-Awsat.
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