A prominent Iraqi Shia cleric apparently detained by US forces reappeared in central Baghdad/aljazeera/22, April

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Tuesday 22, April, 2003/Last Updated: 6:09PM Doha time, 9:00AM GMT
Top Shia cleric reappears in Baghdad

A prominent Iraqi Shia cleric apparently detained by US forces reappeared in central Baghdad on Tuesday after two days of angry demonstrations by his followers.

Sheikh Muhammad al-Fartusi appeared aboard a mini-bus in central Fardus Square, to the cheers of hundreds of his supporters who had earlier chanted slogans outside the nearby hotel housing United States officers and the foreign media.

US officials have said they had no word of Fartusi's arrest, but reports that the prominentﾝcleric had been taken away Sunday had infuriated members of Iraq's Shia majority and threatened to fuel religious tensions.
Iraqi Shia protest arrest of clerics
Sheikh Muhammad al-Fartusi is reportedly the representative in Baghdad of the powerful Hawza Council of Ulema based in Najaf.

One Fartusi follower outside the hotel, Sheikh Nihad Rizkan, said he was happy the protests "contributed to his liberation". Some 1,000 protesters earlier chanted, "Yes, yes to unity, yes, yes to freedom, yes, yes to Islam!" and "No, no, no to arrests, no, no, no to occupation."

"We want straightaway the liberation of our ulema (religious scholars)," the men repeated after a sheikh who addressed the crowd by microphone.

Protesters said Fartusi, Abdelrahman Al-Shuani and Halim al-Fatlawi were arrested along with three bodyguards by US forces Sunday at a checkpoint 25 km south of Baghdad.

They were returning from Karbala, where hundreds of thousands of Shias gathered on Tuesday for the climax of a massive pilgrimage marking the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, Prophet Mohammad's grandson.

The reported arrest threatened to become a major source of friction between the Americans, who toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein, and the Shias, who account for 60 per cent of Iraq's 25 million people.

The Shias, who held little voice in the deposed Saddam Hussein government, were already becoming increasingly strident in their opposition to the occupation, calling on US forces to restore order and demanding the right to create their own government.

"America says it came here to give us freedom and we will use it," one man at the protest, who identified himself as Sheikh Ahmed. He said the demonstrators were trying "to find out if America is here to export freedom or terrorism".

Earlier, thousands of demonstrators gathered around the Palestine Hotel in central Baghdad chanting slogans like "we don't want colonialism", "release Fartusi, or else$B!D(B" asking the US forces to release the clerics.

Reports quoted followers of Fartusi saying that the US should be aware of Muslim sensibilities, "otherwise there will be an explosion." "We suffered under Saddam, we don't want to suffer under the Americans, too," the followers stated. The demonstrators accused the US of being "another ugly face of Saddam", and vowed "not to let the Americans deprive them of their freedom".

The followers warned that the protests would continue until Fartusi was freed. "We want all religious men released," they said. "There will be trouble down south where we are the majority," one of them, Sheikh Ahmed said.

A senior Shia leader, Sheikh Hussein al-Assadi, said they had no idea of Fartusi's whereabouts but issued a warning to US forces occupying the country since the fall of Saddam Hussein nearly two weeks ago. "We want to tell America, which claims it came here to protect freedom, that if it does not do so, it will have to deal with the Iraqi people," he said. ---- Al Jazeera with agency inputs

April 22, 2003