February 25, 2007	Sunday	Safar 7, 1428

BAGHDAD, Feb 24: A suicide car bomber attacked a checkpoint protecting the home of one of Iraq's most powerful Shia leaders, Abdel Aziz Hakim, on Saturday, killing at least three civilians and wounding seven.

In another development, Ammar al-Hakim, the son of Abdel Aziz Hakim, who was arrested on Friday while crossing back into Iraq from Iran, charged that US troops had targeted him for arrest, rudely bound his hands and blindfolded him.

An interior ministry official told AFP the attacker was shot as he drove towards a barrier protecting an access road leading from Al-Hussein Square in downtown Baghdad's Jadriyah district towards Hakim's fortified compound.“He tried to break through the first barrier towards Hakim's house. The guards opened fire on him and he blew himself up,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Three civilian bystanders were killed.”

ROUGH TREATMENT: Ammar al-Hakim told a news conference in Najaf: “Senior (US) officials intended to arrest me, and these officials gave instructions to personnel at the site.”“They tied my hands and blindfolded me,” he said, adding that American soldiers had treated him `rudely’.

Abdel Aziz Hakim is the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), one of the two biggest Shia parties in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government, and a senior cleric with close ties to Iran.

He inherited the movement when his brother was killed by an Al Qaeda suicide bomber in August 2003 in Najaf, in one of the first major attacks of what has become a bitter war between Sunni and Shia factions.

CONDEMNATION: President Jalal Talabani on Saturday strongly criticised US forces for having arrested the son of one of Iraq’s top Shia leaders, demanding that those responsible be reprimanded.

“President Talabani expressed deep regret and sorrow over what happened to the well-known national personality Sayyid Ammar al-Hakim,” Talabani’s office said in a statement.

“President Talabani judges that the treatment of Sayyid al-Hakim was uncivilised and indecent, and he has demanded that the American leadership hold those behind it responsible,” it said.

Talabani described Hakim and his father, Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), as a family which had sacrificed much for Iraq’s battle against dictatorship.

He also demanded “guarantees that such abuses will not be repeated against our national and political figures”.—AFP