Iraq probes murder of 3 Sunni clerics

Rasa - The report released by Iraq's Interior Ministry revealed new information on the killing of three Sunni clerics in southern Iraqi city of Basra.

News ID: 1963

Date: 05 January 2015 - 23:56

RNA - Iraq’s Interior Ministry revealed new information on the killing of three Sunni clerics in southern Iraqi city of Basra.

According to the report released by the ministry, the investigation showed that one of the martyrs had been threatened before as he called ISIL a terrorist organization in his Friday prayer sermon.

Meanwhile, the Sunni speaker of the Iraqi parliament, Salim al-Jabouri, arrived at Basra with a parliament delegation on Saturday to follow up the investigations, officials said.

The Sunni speaker of Council of Representatives of Iraq, Jabouri visited a Sunni non-profit governmental organization, Sunni Endowment Diwan, for talks with officials about the incident.

According to a World Bulletin report, the Iraqi Commission for Human Rights, a governmental organization, also called for protection of religious clerics.

“Violation of human rights on the basis of right to life and belief is an attempt to raise the sectarian violence among the Iraqi people,” Dham al-Azawi, a member of the commission, said in a press conference in the Iraqi parliament on Sunday.

Also Salih al-Haydari, the chief of the Shiite Diwan, told AA that ISIL was trying to put the blame on Shiites for the killing of the Sunni clerics.

Three Sunni clerics had been killed and another had been wounded in an unknown assailant’s attack on Thursday. The assailant had targeted the Sunni clerics while they were in their car in Bab al-Zubair area in Basra, southern Iraq.

R111/108/B/