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Iraq gov't seizes HQ of Learned Elders of Islam™
The Iraqi government seized the west Baghdad headquarters of a powerful Sunni Muslim group Wednesday, cordoning off the building and accusing the group of supporting al-Qaida, officials said. The Association of Muslim Scholars, a hardline Sunni clerics group with links to insurgents, has its headquarters in the Um al-Qura mosque in the capital's Sunni-dominated Ghazaliyhah neighborhood.
The Muslim Scholars have been a thin veneer front for al-Qaeda since 2003 at least. The government is just now getting around to shutting them down?
Iraqi security forces dispatched by the Sunni Endowment, a government agency that cares for Sunni mosques and shrines, surrounded the mosque complex at 9 a.m. Wednesday and demanded that the building be evacuated before noon, the association said in a statement posted on its Web site. Employees were told to remove all personal belongings and even haul out furniture, that troops said would be destroyed if left behind, it said.

The head of the Sunni Endowment held a news conference at the mosque later Wednesday, accusing the clerics group of supporting al-Qaida. "The Association of Muslim Scholars has regrettably been attacking any tribal awakening, resistance or worshippers whenever they form a force to purge their neighborhoods of al-Qaida elements. The association has always justified killing and assassinations carried out by al-Qaida," Ahmed Abdul-Ghafoor al-Samarraie, the Sunni Endowment chief, told reporters. "The association no longer has a place here... These headquarters now belong to the Sunni Endowment," he said.
Posted by: Seafarious 2007-11-14
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=207216