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Hakim to join Iraqis on Eid-ul-Fitr Tehran, Oct 6, 2007 IRNA Leader of Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council Abdel Aziz al Hakim will join people on Eid-ul-Fitr (Feast of Fast Breaking) as radiotherapy on him has finished. "The fifth week of radiotherapy on the SIIC head has come to an end in Tehran and he will return to Iraq in the next few days," said Hakim's son, Seyed Mohsen, in an interview with IRNA. He said result of medical tests and examinations show that his father has gained full recovery. Hakim has been under medical treatment and hospitalized periodically in Tehran...

(CBS/AP) TRENTON The founders of a Trenton mosque have sued in Superior Court in Mercer County to have their religious leader removed, claiming he is trying to make the congregation more fundamentalist. The suit, filed by the International Muslim Brotherhood Inc., the mosque’s owner, as well as three founding members, claims that Imam Sabur Abdul Hakim has recently adopted stricter views of Islam and is planning to beam in lectures by satellite from a conservative sect in Saudi Arabia. The suit also alleges that Hakim began changing religious practices at the Masjid As-Saffat mosque three years ago and appointed his...

The biggest Iraq-related news comes from Texas today: The Washington Post drops a bombshell, learning that one of the most powerful men in Iraq is facing lung cancer, and has traveled to Houston for treatment. 'Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC), the largest party in the Iraqi parliament, is in the United States on treatment for lung cancer, Robin Wright reports in the Post. “In a reflection of Hakim's stature, President Bush authorized immediate transportation to get Hakim from Iraq to the United States, an administration source said yesterday. Vice President Cheney played a role...

Iraq's most powerful Shi'ite party will make key changes to its platform, party officials said on Friday, in a move that will increasingly align it with Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. The changes could distance the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) from neighbouring Shi'ite Iran, where the party was formed in the 1980s to oppose the late President Saddam Hussein. Under the new platform, the party would get its guidance from the Shi'ite religious establishment as before, but more from Sistani, SCIRI officials said. That would mark a shift from SCIRI's current platform,...

LONDON, December 2 (IranMania) - Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a top Iraqi Shiite leader with close ties to Iran, will meet with President Bush next week, the White House confirmed, CNN reported. Al-Hakim leads the powerful Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, a rival group to the political movement led by firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. US National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the meeting was set for Monday. "President Bush looks forward to an exchange of views and a discussion of important issues facing Iraq today," Johndroe said. Also, a senior administration official said Bush will...

A SUSPECTED al Qaeda leader, accused of being involved in September 11 and planning the 2004 Madrid train bombings, has been imprisoned in a secret US jail for the past year, Spain's El Pais newspaper reported today. Mustafa Setmarian, 48, a Syrian with Spanish citizenship, was captured in Pakistan in October 2005 and is held in a prison operated by the US Central Intelligence Agency, Pakistani and European security service officials told El Pais. A spokesman for the US embassy in Spain declined to comment on the report. Setmarian's 2005 capture was reported in May of this year after the...

A Shiite Muslim political leader said Friday that rumors were circulating of an impending coup attempt against the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and warned that "we will not allow it." A new government would mean "canceling the constitution, canceling the results of the elections and going back to square one . . . and we will not accept that," he said. Amiri is also a top official in the Badr Organization, the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which is the leading member of a coalition of Shiite political parties governing...

Sunni Arabs gain American backing in negotiations to form a new government.BAGHDAD – One month after Iraq's Dec. 15 election, a shift is afoot that will probably weaken Shiite political clout as the country's factions enter serious negotiations to form a new government. Increasingly, the US is throwing its weight in Iraq behind Sunni Arabs, about 20 percent of the country, to ensure they are part of a new coalition government. Analysts say the US is convinced reconciliation with Sunni Arabs will help stop the insurgency. There is also an American unease with the growing influence of Iran on Iraq's...

The next vote in Iraq is the Oct. 15 referendum on the nation's constitution, but the political elite is already turning its attention to the general elections scheduled for December. Most Iraqi politicians now expect the constitution to be approved; fears have faded that Sunni Arabs might manage to vote it down. The optimism rises from several developments. First, as more and more Sunni Arabs read the proposed text, now widely distributed, they realize it is not as bad as some of their self-styled leaders claimed. The latest suicide-killer attacks have also come as a wake-up call to Sunnis not...

...The dilemma is that most of Iraq's oil wealth is found in areas claimed by Shiites and Kurds. And some leading Iraqi ethnic politicians have been asserting a right to keep all the oil revenue in their regions. Kurdish chieftain Massoud Barzani wants to control the northern city of Kirkuk, while Shiite politician Abdul Aziz al-Hakim is pushing for nearly complete control of the oil fields in the south. Thus strong regional governments, if allowed too much control over oil, risk leaving an Iraq with a rump Sunni province, and could create the perception of a legitimate grievance where none...

Here we go again. With the start of the Iraqi campaign season, doomsters are back with predictions of disaster for the newly liberated nation. Some claim the election could be a prelude to civil war. Others warn that the nation's Shiite majority might, in a moment of madness, choose an Iranian-style theocracy. Still others point to the Kurdish show of disaffection as a sign the multi-ethnic country may well be heading for disintegration, and that the coming elections could speed up the process. Yet most doomsters are the same people who opposed first the liberation of Iraq, and then the...

The American army stopped Friday one of the closest collaborators of the leader radical Shiite Moqtada Sadr whereas it had just left the mosque of Koufa where its head pronounced his sermon, affirmed the office of Sadr in a communiqué. "Mohammad Tabtabaï Hakim and its bodyguard were stopped by the American forces and their driver was killed whereas they left Koufa by a minor road to regain Najaf after the prayer of Friday ", specified the official statement.

Iraqis attack US date for hand-over By Anton La Guardia, Diplomatic Editor (Filed: 27/11/2003) Powerful Shi'ite leaders yesterday criticised America's plan to hand power to an interim Iraqi government next summer. They warned of "real problems" unless it was revised. Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, brother of a prominent Shi'ite leader assassinated in August, complained that the plan does not envisage elections until next March, relegates the United Nations to a secondary role and does not protect Iraq's Islamic identity. Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim He said the misgivings were shared by Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini al-Sistani, Iraq's most influential Shi'ite religious leader. Mr Hakim added:...

Leaders of Iraq's interim Governing Council joined U.S. officials and Middle Eastern immigrants at a memorial service in Northern Virginia last night that reflected rising demands by Iraqis for a quicker turnover of power by U.S. occupation authorities. "We need to build our own security and our own government. We will work with the coalition . . . but they need to hurry," said the council's temporary president, Ahmed Chalabi, speaking in Arabic to an audience that included Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz. His comments were translated into English for a reporter. The service was in honor of Ayatollah...

<p>My friends and family back in the states are frustrated because every time Najaf - the city in southern Iraq where my unit has been stationed - is in the news, the reports are of conflict between the U.S. forces and armed militias. To hear the media tell it, America has done nothing to improve the infrastructure or security, and the Iraqi public is volatile and seeking revenge.</p>

<p>BAGHDAD &#8212; A former Ba'ath Party official has confessed to planning the massive car bombing that killed the senior Shi'ite cleric Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim and more than 80 others last month, a top Shi'ite security official said.</p> <p>Ayatollah al-Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), was killed in the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf on Aug. 29. The incident has threatened to further divide Iraqi Shi'ites oppressed by former President Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, which was primarily Sunni.</p>

Hizbullah’s secretary-general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, gave an address on the assassination of Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim Monday night, accusing the Israeli Mossad of the explosion that killed the Iraqi cleric and some 83 people at the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, Iraq. Nasrallah also said it was possible that the blast could have been arranged by Saddam Hussein or by Sunni extremists, but he emphasized the regional equation that Israel and America stand to benefit the most from the death of al-Hakim, and suggested Iraqis to examine the possibility of such an action by the Israelis. Nasrallah did not provide any...

<p>The killing Friday of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim in the holy city of Najaf further complicates the race for power in post-Saddam Iraq, riven by religious turmoil and wide discontent with the U.S.-led occupation.</p> <p>Al-Hakim, 64, was killed in the car bombing of Imam Ali mosque, Shiite Islam's holiest shrine in Iraq. He had returned to his native country May 10 after more than two decades in exile in neighboring Iran.</p>

<p>BAGHDAD, Iraq - A bomb exploded outside the house of one of Iraqi's most important Shiite clerics on Sunday, killing three guards and injuring 10 others. The fresh violence comes as the U.S.-led coalition quietly recruits former Iraqi spies to work with American intelligence officials in the country, according to Iraqis.</p>

CNN just mentioned this attack in Najif. I don't know who the guards were...looking for hard copy.

<p>Iraq's American-backed administration failed in its first week to choose a president, abandoning that mission in favor of a weak, three-man rotating leadership. The top U.S. official in Iraq -- who hand-picked the Governing Council -- returned to Washington while an insurgency killed another American soldier Saturday.</p>

Exiled cleric returns home to call for free Islamic stateThousands of Shia Muslims line the road to Basra to greet religious leader who was jailed and tortured by Saddam By Donald Macintyre in Najaf 11 May 2003 The most prominent leader among Iraq's majority Shia Muslims yesterday crossed into the country for the first time after 23 years of exile and told an ecstatic rally of up to 100,000 supporters that Iraq must have a "totally independent" government. The venerated cleric Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim – jailed and tortured in the 1970s for opposing Saddam Hussein – arrived in Basra...

As Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim, the 63 years old leader of the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq (SAIRI) is preparing to leave for his hometown of Najaf, a double conflict is surfacing, pitting senior Iraqi and Iranian Shi’ite leaders and their respective rival religious circles (hawzeh) of Qom in Iran and Najaf in Iraq against each other. Hundreds of Iraqi clerics who had escaped to Iran the inferno Saddam Hoseyn has created for the Shi’as have already left the Iranian religious of Qom, where they were teaching and learning, for their native Iraq, most of them assuring...

Before the start of the campaign to liberate Iraq, pundits and exiles had cast the Shiite community as an almost unconditional ally of the United States. Iraqi Shiites were supposed to be as keen to rise against Saddam Hussein as the so-called "Arab street" was sizzling to explode in his support. In the event, however, there was little or no uprising of the Shiites. Terrorised by Saddam's machinery of fear, the community did not wish to repeat its tragic experience of 1991 when it rose and, abandoned by the US, was crushed by the regime. Less than two weeks after...

An Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite leader said he was ready to work with the United States and the international community to improve the conditions of Iraqis and establish security and stability in his war-torn homeland. But Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer Al Hakim, one of the most powerful voices among Iraq's majority Shiites, said fervent demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims at the holy shrine of Karbala showed Iraqis were able to govern themselves. "There is no doubt we are going to cooperate with all sides and forces that have relations with the Iraqi issue," Hakim said in an interview. "Among these...

WASHINGTON, April 20 (AFP) - US intelligence officials have tracked around 12 Iranian agents moving from Tehran to Al Kut in southeastern Iraq over the past month, according to latest edition of Newsweek out Monday. "We are absolutely 100 percent positive that there are Iranian operatives in town," a senior US military intelligence official told Newsweek, adding that several of them were known members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard. US officials believe that the Iranians in Al Kut, 160 kilometersmiles) southeast of Baghdad are primarily intelligence officers gathering information and possibly spreading propaganda. There are concerned though that Iran appears...

SCIRI: Iraqis eventually seeking an Islamic system April 18 - The Iraqis will eventually seek an Islamic system for governing the country, the deputy head of the Shiite group SCIRI said Friday. “We will first opt for a national political system but eventually the Iraqi people will seek an Islamic republic system,” Abdul-Aziz Hakim of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution of Iraq said in Kut. Talking to the Iran’s state-run television IRIB, Hakim added that the Shiites form more than 60 per cent of the population and their will for an Islamic system would prevail in democratic elections....

The biggest Iraqi Shi'ite opposition group says it will boycott a US-hosted meeting of opposition factions on Tuesday. It also says it will not recognise a US-installed interim administration for Iraq. A senior leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, Abdul Aziz Hakim, told a news conference on Monday his group would not be going to the meeting of US officials and Iraqi political parties opposed to ousted President Saddam Hussein in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah. "We will not attend the meeting in Nasiriyah because the Iraqi people won't accept preparations for an administration...

The leader of Iraq's main Shi'ite opposition group, Ayatollah Mohammad-Baqer Hakim, has said he is going to return home after living in exile in neighbouring Iran for more than two decades. He is the head of the Iranian-based Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, which is believed to have about 15,000 fighters. Since the beginning of the US-led war in Iraq, Washington has repeatedly warned both Ayatollah Hakim's group and their Iranian hosts not to intervene in the war in Iraq. Ayatollah Hakim's spokesman insisted that Iraq was his motherland and he did not need permission to go...

Tehran, April 6, IRNA -- Head of Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) Ayatollah Baqer Hakim will return to Iraq after an hiatus of 23 years, said his nephew Seyed Mohsen Hakim here Sunday. Speaking to IRNA, he said Ayatollah Hakim has made the decision in support of the Iraqi nation in the current difficult crisis. He said another reason for his return is to embark of theological teaching in the Iraq's holy city of Najaf. "The task of guidance and advise to the Iraqi people on national political discourse will enter a new phase with Ayatollah Hakim's...

BACKGROUND ON AYATOLLAH SAYED MOHAMAD BAQIR AL HAKIM (Commentary and editing by James Roger Brown, Director, THE SOCIOLOGY CENTER, thesociologist@aol.com.) This week exiled Shiite Cleric Ayatollah Sayed Mohamad Baqir al Hakim announced plans to return to Iraq to assume a leadership role for Iraqi Shiites which constitute 60% of the population. Ayatollah al Hakim has been in Iran since leaving Iraq in 1980. He was welcomed in Iran by the top Muslim fundamentalists and was an active political ally. Members of the al Hakim family have been popular and powerful Clerics for several generations. A 60 Minutes interview of Ayatollah...