Sadr sharia courts – information request

Thanks very much. There’s a lot of weird, contradictory information here; it seems very much to me as if the court has been conflated with all sorts of atrocities committed as acts of indiscipline and/or local vendettas carried out by Sadr’s troops. If people were being tortured for suspicions of collaboration with coalition forces, then that’s obviously bad, but this would be something carried out by Sadr himself, not by a sharia court as such, since there’s no sharia law dictating that you have to knuckle under to thugs and freebooters. What search-words were you using; I really want to keep on top of this, because I think that an accurate understanding of Sadrism is going to hold a lot of the keys to the vexed “Islamism” question.

I’ve found one:http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20040901-124008-3160r.htm

This article in the Washington Times from 1st September was based on a secret, and leaked, ‘US Army Intelligence report’. It’s been referred to elsewhere, eg in the Lebanese Daily Star, but I haven’t seen it picked up by any large papers or broadcasting organisations. (Yes, I do know the Moonies own the WT, no that does’t necessarily mean anything they print is lies.) I don’t quite know if it counts, since it was published after 28th August, but we don’t know when the intelligence report it was based on was compiled, and what subsequent intelligence reports have concluded.

I think it’s quite possible that Sadr did commit atrocities, but that there has been no follow-up because: a) the US military has decided to go with Sistani’s policy of coming to an ‘understanding with Sadr’ and leaving him alone as long as he doesn’t come out in open revolt- and publicising any murders he may have committed does rather conflict with this;
b) Western journalists aren’t going to Najaf to check because Najaf right now is a dangerous place to be a white-skinned foreigner.

On the other hand, maybe Sadr- at least in Najaf- didn’t commit atrocities, although we know he has a thuggish militia at his command. Two key paragraphs from the WT report:
‘The source said that while it appears certain that the bodies exist, the circumstances of when and where the people were killed, and by whom, remained unknown yesterday.
‘ “We don’t have a complete picture of where they came from,” the officer said. “We’re trying to uncover what really happened before we are able to release information.” ‘

And Zeyad on ‘Healing Iraq’ (http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/ )thought the stories were credible and passed on rumours from a friend of his who was in Najaf at the time:
‘Bodies of mutilated and executed policemen were found in Sadr’s ‘legal court’, also the bodies of 4 women who were seriously disfigured. Our friend said that Abdul-Sattar Al-Bahadili, who was Sadr’s former representative in Basrah (the one who called for kidnappings of British female soldiers), was in charge of the court. He ordered summary executions and beat people with a rubber truncheon when they disobeyed his orders.

‘I will try to get the photos and post them here.’

Maybe Sadr committed atrocities and got away with it because he is now too big to touch; maybe he didn’t. But solid news seems hard to get hold of on this topic.

For reasons why there haven’t been more enquiries into the atrocity allegations, I’d also add c)- Sistani’s nominees will now be running Najaf, and if Sistani wants to keep al-Sadr, whom he seems to despise, in the political process, he will discourage enquiry into Sadrist atrocities.

As for it being a sharia court or Muqtada’s private star chamber: if he’ll do whatever he can get away with and point to the Koran for justifcation. The distinction between Muqtada’s crime-oriented atrocities and his Islamically-motivated atrocities seems to me to be a distinction without a difference. The thugs currently marauding in the Darfur, like the thugs unleashed over the last decade in the southern Sudan, are both claiming to be ‘better’, ie more Wah’habi, Muslims than their victims and are looting their property. Who says virtue has to be its own reward?

I didn’t go for a fancy combination of search words but went to the “newsnow feed”:http://www.newsnow.co.uk/ , did a search on “Sadr” and then scrolled through looking for likely headlines.

I’m going to get flamed for saying this, but it seems like his civilian body count is lower than ours (the U.S. occupations). Of course, one needs to remember that all the civilians we killed while fighting him are *actually his fault*, because he provoked us — I get it, I get it.

A resistance group fighting foreign occupation gets besieged in a small town by the overwhelming (overwhelming-squared, overwhelming beyond imagination) foreign military force; attacked by bombs, tanks, missiles, snipers, god knows what else. Infiltrated by 15-year old spies hired by the occupying forces:

Ahmed tells how he and Sameer discovered a 15-year old boy who had been acting as a spy for the Americans. He had been carrying a GPS (global positioning system) device in his sleeve, marking the positions of all the Mahdi Army units in the neighborhood. Ahmed and Sameer chased the boy down, and handed him over to the Mahdi Army, knowing they would probably torture and kill him.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002008476_battleground18.html

And you choose to research the alleged atrocities committed by … the resistance fighters? Nice going, Daniel.