ASIA/IRAQ - Spokesman for the Sadrist Movement: Muqtada al-Sadr will pay a visit to the Vatican

Monday, 28 August 2017 shi'ites armed groups sectaniarism middle east oriental churches pope francis

al Arabiya

IRAQ

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Baghdad (Agenzia Fides) - Iraqi Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr will set on a European tour responding to official invitations, including a visit to the Vatican and a meeting with Pope Francis. This was confirmed in recent days by Jaafar al Mussawi, spokesman for Muqtada al-Sadr. The same announcement also refers to the official invitation addressed to the leader of the Sadrist movement by Egypt. The spokesman himself pointed out that al-Sadr's activism on international scenarios is aimed primarily at favoring the reconstruction in areas of Iraq, which had been occupied by jihadist militias in 2014. In the years following the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, the name of al-Sadr - the son of the famous Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr - appeared linked to the Mahdi Army, a militia organized by the Shia leader to combat the US military presence in the Country. Analysts have seen several changes of the leader over the last decade, which in 2008 dissolved his militia and does not appear aligned either with Iran or with the government of Baghdad controlled by Shia political forces. In the past, Muqtada al-Sadr hoped to overcome the "quota system" which since Saddam's death is based on sectarian power management in Iraq. Muqtada al-sadr tries to be a potential mediator in a Country upset in recent years by the jihadist offensive, from the proclamation of the Islamic Caliphate with a strategic base in Mosul to the coexistence of various and potentially rival forces that led to the reconquest of almost all areas that had fallen into the hands of the Jihadist militias. Last January, Iraqi Chaldean Christian politician Pascale Warda, former minister of immigration in the first transition government following the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, publicly expressed her satisfaction for Muqtada al Sadr's position in support of the need to return legitimate property owners the property illegally taken away in previous months from Christian families in Baghdad, Kirkuk and other Iraqi cities. (GV) (Agenzia Fides, 28/9/2017)