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BAGHDAD, June 21: Chanting and waving banners, about 2,000 Shias protested outside the compound of the US-led administration in Baghdad on Saturday, demanding an end to the US occupation of Iraq.
“We want to form a national government,” said one of the demonstrators, Sayyid Ali. “We want freedom and justice.”
The rally was organised by Shia scholars in Baghdad’s Sadr City slum district — once known as Saddam City, but renamed by its two million Shia residents after the US-British invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein on April 9.
“The Americans are occupiers and aggressors,” Ali said, opposite the gates of the vast presidential palace compound now used by the US-led rulers. “They were supposed to free us from the oppressor, now they are only occupying us.”
There was no repeat of the violence that erupted on the same spot on Wednesday, when US troops killed two Iraqis during a protest by stone-throwing former soldiers thrown out of work by a US decree dissolving the Iraqi military.
ARRESTED: US forces stormed the headquarters of the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), arrested three employees and confiscated computers, the leading Shia group told AFP on Saturday.
“A group of American soldiers entered the headquarters on Friday and arrested three of our employees after treating people inside roughly,” SAIRI official Mohammed al-Hashemi told AFP.
“The soldiers confiscated documents, computers and disks without explaining why.”
Hashemi said the soldiers “refused to say where they were taking the three employees or why they were arresting them.”
The three “were not management, just administrative employees”.
“The soldiers drove up in two jeeps and two armoured vehicles. They knocked down the doors, smashed windows, locked the employees in an office while they searched for several hours,” Hashemi charged.
“This is not acceptable behaviour,” he added.—Reuters/AFP
