Sadr militant to take up anti-US battle in Iraqi National Assembly

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http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_9-2-2005_pg4_9

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and other clerics had called on the masses to vote, as a religious duty, to reclaim Shia power in the country

AATHALLAH Ghazi Ismail was at the forefront of the campaign by followers of Shiite Muslim radical cleric Moqtada Sadr against the US military in Iraq.

Now he is preparing to take up a seat, as the head of the Sadr list, in the national assembly, which the US occupiers helped to set up. But he says his priorities have not changed. Ismail, 38, proudly showed off a picture of himself seated with the firebrand cleric at his modest home in Sadr City, an impoverished Shiite neighbourhood of two million in eastern Baghdad.

His success in the January 30 election came out of the blue.

In the latest vote count results released Friday, Ismail was in third place with 43,383 votes, or 1.3 percent of the 3.3 million counted up to then. snip

A former journalist and father of six, Ismail has nothing good to say about the interim government. He accuses them of being corrupt “agents of the United States”. “They are a copy of Saddam and worse than the Baathists,” he declared.

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1. Kick.

Still waiting for the other shoe to drop as far as what
al Sadr is going to do. He still seems to be sitting on the
fence like a good boy, at least in public.