New Protests in Iraq + Turkey

Iraqi Shi'ite Protesters March on U.S. HQ

Reuters - October 8

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - More than 6,000 Shi'ite Muslims marched to the headquarters of the U.S.-led administration in Iraq on Wednesday in a second day of protests demanding the release of a cleric arrested by American troops. As U.S. tanks approached, protesters lay down in the road outside a palace complex in central Baghdad that formerly housed Saddam Hussein's top officials and has now been taken over by Iraq's occupiers. They shouted slogans and refused to move.

The protesters had marched from a mosque in southern Baghdad where they massed on Tuesday following the detention of Sheikh Muayad Khazraji, a Shi'ite cleric.

Officials in the U.S.-led administration held talks with protest representatives on defusing the situation but there was no breakthrough. Clerics running the demonstrations dismissed assertions by U.S. officials that they could not release the Shi'ite leader because he was in the hands of Iraqi authorities.

"If he is not released, we will widen our protests," said cleric Hazim al-Araji.

Turkish anti-war protesters

Turkish anti-war protesters shout slogans and hold up banners as they stage a sit-in protest in central Istanbul October 8, 2003. Some five hundred protesters from Islamists to leftist students condemned a motion approved by the Turkish parliament on Tuesday to send peacekeeping troops to neighbouring Iraq (news - web sites) in a request by its NATO ally the United States.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective companies.

printed from New Protests in Iraq + Turkey on 2004-05-25 21:59:22