Baghdad, June 27: A key ally of the anti-US cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has been freed, his group said on Saturday, after more than two years in detention on suspicion of inciting murder and abduction.
“Iraqi and American forces released Sheikh Abdul Hadi al-Darraji and he went to his house in Sadr City,” in eastern Baghdad, said Sadr movement spokesman Salah al-Obaidi, in the holy city of Najaf south of the capital.
“The American forces didn’t bring any charge against Darraji during the long time of his detention, which means that he was arrested for political reasons and not for criminal reasons,” Obaidi said.
Darraji was the Sadrists’ national spokesman and director of its office in Baghdad.
He was arrested on January 19, 2007 by American soldiers and members of Iraqi special forces in Baladiyat, close to the sprawling Shiite slum of Sadr City.
Darraji was accused of being chief of the Sadrists legal committee “charged to justify by fatwas (religious decrees) the abduction, torture and assassination of innocents,” according to the US military.
According to Obaidi, Darraji was held in Camp Bucca, near the southern port of Basra, after being arrested with three of his comrades outside a mosque in an altercation in which one of his guards was killed.
–Agencies