Update on the Battle of Najaf/Kufa Farms area January 28 2007: Ten now reported sentenced to death
Back on January 28, 2007 there occurred one of the biggest battles of the post-invasion phase of the Iraq War. Hundreds of civilians were reported killed and hundreds more civilians reported captured after significant ground and air activities in the area.
I was reading the still messy and not-well-organized wiki page on The Battle of Najaf and found an interesting update:
10 Iraqi cult members sentenced to death
Middle East Times/September 2, 2007Najaf, Iraq — Ten members of an Iraqi doomsday cult were sentenced to death Sunday, and 394 jailed for their roles in a January rebellion against Iraqi and US troops that left hundreds dead, police said.
“The criminal court passed judgement on 458 accused,” Najaf police chief Brigadier General Abdel Karim Mustapha said.
“It sentenced 10 leaders of the Soldiers of Heaven to death, and decided to release 54 of them,” he said. “The rest were sentenced to jail terms ranging from 15 years to life.”
In January, the militant sect, dubbing itself the Jund Al Samaa or “Soldiers of Heaven,” clashed with US and Iraqi forces outside the holy city of Najaf, three days ahead of the Shiite Ashura festival.
The fighting left 263 sect followers dead, including their messianic leader Dhia Abdel Zahra Kadhim Al Krimawi, also known as Abu Kamar, who believed himself to be a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed.
The Iraqi security forces reportedly lost three soldiers and three policemen.
After the battle, police rounded up hundreds of sect members and put them on trial.
“With today’s sentencing, the curtain has fallen on the Soldiers of Heaven group,” Mustapha said.
Abu Kamar has also claimed to be a descendant of the Imam Mehdi, an 8th-century imam who vanished as a boy and, who, Shiites believe, will return to bring justice to the world.
At the time of the attack, Najaf deputy governor Abdel Hussein Attan said that the well-structured group planned to attack senior Shiite clerics and seize control of religious sites in Najaf, in a sign the Mehdi was about to reappear.
According to wikipedia (currently) the Middle East Times parent company is owned by the Unification Church. Can anyone confirm, add to or refute the accuracy of this MET report?
See also: Scanlyze tag Najaf
Copyright © 2007 Henry Edward Hardy
Najaf Update: February 21, 2007
Interesting press release from the Multinational Forces in Iraq regarding Hilla, a town near An-Najaf, and the continuing suppression of heterodox Shia in the area. We must ask once again, what happened to the approximately 200 women and children captured near Najaf and Kufa in the “Battle of Najaf” on Jan 28, 2007?
Hilla SWAT captures 21 insurgent leaders
Saturday, 17 February 2007
Multi-National Corps – Iraq
Public Affairs Office, Camp Victory
APO AE 09342FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
RELEASE No. 20070217-05
Feb. 17, 2007Hilla SWAT captures 21 insurgent leaders
Multi-National Corps – Iraq PAOBAGHDAD – Iraqi Special Weapons and Tactics Team members of Hilla SWAT arrested 21 suspected insurgent leaders during operations with Coalition advisers Feb. 16 southwest of Hilla. The suspects are believed to be Mahdawiyah leaders who are threatening the lives of Iraqi Security Forces and civilians in the area.
The Mahdawiyah group was involved in the battle against Iraqi Forces Jan. 28 in Najaf. Since the battle, the Mahdawiyah leadership has made death threats to Hilla SWAT policemen and their family members.
There were Iraqi arrest warrants for all the suspects. Hilla SWAT also detained 13 additional persons for questioning.
The operation by Hilla SWAT resulted in minimal damage to the objective. There were no Iraqi civilian, Iraqi forces or Coalition Forces casualties.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT MULTI-NATIONAL CORPS – IRAQ, PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICE BY E-MAIL AT MNCI-PAO-VICTORYMAINJOC@IRAQ.CENTCOM.MIL
See also: Keyword ‘Najaf’ on scanlyze
Copyright © 2007 Henry Edward Hardy
Najaf Update: February 9, 2007
According to the Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram, there is a claim by an Iraqi parliamentarian that as many as 1,500 people may have been killed in last week’s fighting near An-Najaf. The nature of the groups engaged there and their leadership remains a matter of uncertainty.
by Nermeen Al-Mufti
Al-AhramAccording to independent parliamentarian Mohammad Al-Deini, Iranian agents are trying to distract attention from killings in Najaf. According to Al-Deini, the Iraqi army, backed by US forces, shelled an Arab tribal convoy as it was proceeding to Najaf to participate in Imam Al-Husein celebrations. Most of the victims were from Al-Hawatemah tribe, a Shia clan known to oppose Iranian intervention in Iraq. Al-Deini believes that the hidden imam story was a cover-up for a far more gruesome affair. Up to 1,500 people may have been killed in Najaf, he added.
News agencies have conducted interviews with eyewitnesses from Al-Hawatemah tribe. The eyewitnesses confirmed that their clan is Shia-Arab. Clashes, eyewitnesses said, began when the car transporting the clan’s chief and his wife approached a checkpoint ahead of Najaf on the festival of Ashura. The chief was about to explain to the soldiers manning the checkpoints that the authorities had approved their trip, but before he had the chance to make his point shots were fired. The chief, identified as Sheikh Saad Al-Nayif, his wife and his driver were killed. The rest of the clan, who were armed with machineguns for protection, had no option but to return the fire, the eyewitnesses said.
A source from Jund Al-Samaa said that the group was a peaceful one and took no part in the fighting. But an official source claimed that Jund Al-Samaa was an “ungodly” group and with a leader who managed to convince poor and uneducated young men that he was the hidden imam. The leader had given the young men his book, Qadi Al-Samaa (The Judge of Heavens), in which he claims that one of the signs of the appearance of the hidden imam was the killing of top religious scholars. Reporters in south Iraq cited members of impoverished families as confirming that their sons were members of Jund Al-Samaa and had gone to Zarka before the clashes broke out.
Jund Al-Samaa (wikipedia)
See also: Keyword ‘Najaf’ on scanlyze
Copyright © 2007 Henry Edward Hardy
Najaf Update: February 7, 2007
Still more sceptical reporting on the Najaf Incident. Conn Hallinan of Foreign Policy In Focus sees the way the story is being positioned as part of the run-up to a possible US attack on Iran.
Foreign Policy In Focus
Conn Hallinan | February 7, 2007
Times Unrepentant
Despite the IPS, Independent, and Arab media reports, The New York Times continues to report that the battle was with a “renegade militia.” More than a week after the incident, a Times editorial chastised the Iraqi Army for allowing “hundreds of armed zealots” to set up “a fortified encampment, complete with tunnels, trenches, blockades, 40 heavy machine guns and at least two antiaircraft weapons.” The editorial went on to suggest that “a successful attack on top clerics and pilgrims in Najaf would have been disastrous.”
The details on the camp, the weapons, and the charge that Najaf was the target are straight from Iraqi government sources.
The way the U.S. media has reported the “battle” of Zarqa is a virtual replay of the kind of reporting that characterized the run-up to the Iraq War. The media seems to be taking a chillingly similar tack in its reporting about “Iranian interference” in Iraq. For instance, a recent story in The New York Times reports that Iran may have been involved in the recent kidnapping and murder of five Americans. But the story presents nothing but a series of unnamed sources and speculations.
The Bush administration allegations that Iran has set up insurgent training camps and built anti-personnel bombs that have killed and maimed U.S. soldiers have been routinely reported on all the major networks and daily newspapers with virtually no dissenting voices or questions raised concerning the motives of sources.
Such reporting paves the road to war. Will its next victim be Iran?
Chris Floyd underlines the role of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) in shaping the “official story” now making the rounds in The New York Times and other US publications.
Ersatz Apocalypto: Slaughter and Spin in the Battle for Najaf
Atlantic Free Press
Wednesday, 07 February 2007
by Chris FloydSCIRI members, buttressed by the Najaf provincial government, which they control, said that more than 1,000 terrorists were killed in the battle, and that some 200 “brainwashed women and children” were detained and “removed to another place,” presumably for deprogramming. SCIRI officials differed on the number of terrorists captured in the battle; one said 50, another said 16, yet another said “hundreds” were detained. It was SCIRI that advanced the notion that the attack aimed to kill the clerics, not capture them. Various SCIRI officials said the cult’s leader was a) the aforesaid unnamed Lebanese national; b) Dhiaa’ Abdul Zahra Kadhim, as in the Sadrist account; c) a renegade Sadrist named Ahmed Kadhim Al-Gar’awi Al-Basri ; d) another renegade Sadrist named Ahmed Hassan al-Yamani; e) a self-proclaimed messiah named Ali bin Ali bin Abi Talib.
A SCIRI member of the Najaf governing council also claimed that “the leader of this group had links with the former regime elements since 1993. Some of the gunmen brought their families with them in order to make it easier to enter the city,” Associated Press reports. An Iraqi army officer, sectarian affiliation unknown, added that Lebanese, Egyptians and Sudanese were taken prisoner in the battle – though none of these foreign fighters have yet been produced. And just for good measure, Najaf’s SCIRI governor, As’ad Abu Gilel, said the attackers were Sunni insurgents, planning to attack Shiite pilgrims on their way to mark the festival of Ashura in Najaf.
U.S. military officials originally picked various items from this dizzying smorgasbord of spin in cobbling together their own version of the battle, although in general they hewed more closely to the SCIRI line. But that’s not surprising, given the fact that this violent, extremist Shiite faction, whose death-dealing militia is deeply embedded in the Iraqi security forces, is currently in high favor with the Bush White House.
However, by mid-week, the Pentagon suddenly reversed course and came out with a whole new account, one cited by Bush himself, as the Washington Post reported. Now the battle was depicted as an exemplary pre-emptive strike by an “aggressive” and “impressive” Iraqi military, acting on good intelligence that the cult intended to storm Najaf and kill the leading clerics because they refused to recognize the claim of the cult’s leader (now known as Samer Abu Kamar, by the way) to be the Mahdi.
Nidhal Laithi of Azzaman says that members of the Iraq Parliament have called for a special tribunal similar to that which prosecuted former Iraqi President Saddam al-Tikriti to investigate the Najaf Incident. The Speaker of the Iraqi Parliment, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, condemned what he called a “massacre”.
The Najaf ‘massacre’ divides country
By Nidhal LaithiAzzaman, February 6, 2007
Some members of parliament in a session on Monday requested the formation of a tribunal to look into the bloody incident.
Some legislators urged the parliament to form a tribunal like the one which sentenced former leader Saddam Hussein and two of his senior aides to death for the killing of 148 people from Dujail.
The government has said it mobilized troops to quell what it called a rebellion north of Najaf and asked U.S. military assistance to defeat the rebels.
But parliamentary speaker, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, said that he received letters from tribal leaders in the south refuting the government version of events.
Mashhadani called the battle ‘a massacre’, accusing the government of hiding the truth of what exactly happened in Najaf.
BBS gives casualty totals according to the Iraqi government:
Bloody Najaf Battle Could Mark Turning Point
BBS
Sunday, February 04 2007 @ 01:18 PM EST
IRAQ: Southern Iraq in danger of slipping into chaos
Ambiguity still surrounds events of the battle that pitted Iraqi and US forces on one side against a previously unknown Shi’ite messianic cult called ‘Jund al-Samaa’, or ‘Soldiers of Heaven’, on the other.
The clashes, which erupted on 28 January in Najaf palm groves, left 263 militants dead, 210 wounded and 392 others arrested [emphasis mine–HH], Iraqi defence ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said.
At least 11 Iraqi troops were killed along with two US soldiers, whose helicopter was shot down during the battle. Some 30 Iraqi troops were wounded.
Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (wikipedia)
See also: Keyword ‘Najaf’ on scanlyze
Copyright © 2007 Henry Edward Hardy
Update: Najaf and around Iraq
A few more points of interest on the ongoing victorious US liberation campaign in Iraq.
Air Force Times has more on the Najaf Incident.
Despite the “fog of war” obscuring exactly who were the combatants and non-combatants at Najaf, the US apparently used substantial air assets in a 5 square mile area:
F-16, A-10 power rained down in Najaf fight
Juan Cole has more Iraq news at Bay Indymedia:
1,000 Killed in Iraq in Past Week; Parliamentarians call for Expulsion of Arabs, Iranians
And there is more excellent, detailed coverage from Mohammed al Dulaimy at the McClatchy Newspapers:
Roundup of violence in Iraq – 4 February 2007.
See also: Keyword ‘Najaf’ on scanlyze
Copyright © 2007 Henry Edward Hardy
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