- RAMADI, Iraq - A senior Sunni
cleric called on his followers to launch a holy war against the US forces
in Iraq and threatened to turn the hotspot city of Ramadi into a "graveyard"
for American troops.
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- "I ask US President (George W.) Bush to withdraw
from Iraq or else Ramadi will become a graveyard for US soldiers,"
declared Sheikh Akram Ubayed Furaih at weekly prayers in the city, 100
kilometres (60 miles) west of Baghdad.
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- "I call upon my brothers the Shiites and on all
other religious groups to embark on a Jihad (holy war) against the US military
to force them out of Iraq," said the cleric, who spent three months
in a prison after being arrested by the US military and whose home was
also raided last week.
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- "I urge all the Iraqi people to fight a holy war
against the Americans," said the cleric, among the most respected
figures in this Sunni rebel bastion in the heart of Al-Anbar province.
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- Using slightly more moderate tones, two other Sunni clerics
from the Muslim Scholars' Association spoke out against conditions in military
detention centres run by the US-led coalition.
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- "We have received messages from inmates at Um Qasr
(detention centre on the border with Kuwait) describing their suffering
during this hot weather," said Ahmed Abdel Gafur Samarrai, addressing
a crowd at the Um al-Qura mosque in Baghdad.
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- He called on the United Nations to intervene on behalf
of the detainees.
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- "The United Nations must do something because it
granted a legitimacy to the occupation, but this legitimacy has been lost
due to the actions that have taken place," said Samarrai in reference
to the thousands of Iraqis locked away on suspicion of involvement in the
persistent insurgency that dogged the 14-month US-led occupation.
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- In another Sunni mosque in the capital, Shiek Hassan
Samarrai took the same line of criticism.
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- Both clerics made reference to a protest sit-in organised
by the Iraqi Islamic Party at the doors of the detention centre in Um Qasr.
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