| Interior Minister Bayan Jabr dismissed accusations that a Shiite militia has played a leading role in assassinating Sunni Arab clerics. Jabr said in an interview that more mosques and clerics from the country's majority Shiite community have been attacked than those belonging to the Sunni minority. Jabr is a top member of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the country's largest Shiite party known by its acronym SCIRI, and has served as a senior official in the party's militia, the Badr Brigade, before joining Iraq's first postwar Cabinet in 2003. When asked about allegations against the brigade made by Sunni Arab clerics and repeated by lay Sunnis, Jabr said a police investigation has produced nothing to suggest involvement by the Shiite militia. "Terrorists" rounded by security forces have, instead, confessed to killing clerics from both sides to stoke sectarian strife, he said. |