Diwaniya police arrest 4 Soldiers of Heaven

DIWANIYA / IraqiNews.com: Policemen in al-Diwaniya arrested four members of the Soldiers of Heaven group on Saturday, according to the province’s police chief. “A police force arrested the group members while raiding a hideout that have been under close monitoring by security agencies for two months,” Maj. General Abdulkhaleq al-Badri said that the activities of that cell had been under intelligence surveillance by security forces. “Criminal acts planned by the group had been foiled,” he added. Diwaniya lies 180 km south of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. The Soldiers of Heaven is a Shiite armed group whose leader is allegedly the Awaited Mahdi, the 12th Messiah-like holiest figure for Shiite Muslims. In late January 2007 Iraqi and U.S. forces launched a wide-scale security operation against the group members in their stronghold in al-Zarga area, 13 km northeast of Najaf, 110 km southwest of Baghdad, killing more than 300 militants, including the group leader, and capturing hundreds others. Military operations continued in early February 2007 as Iraqi authorities were tipped about the group’s plans to wage armed operations to control the holy Shiite city of Najaf and assassinate scholars there. The plans, which coincided with the celebrations of Ashura, a major religious occasion for Shiite Muslims in Iraq, envisaged having Najaf as a springboard to control other Iraqi cities. Iraqi authorities had said that the leader of the Soldiers of Heaven claimed that he was the Awaited Mahdi, believed by the Shiites to be the duodecimal imam. The self-claimed Mahdi was planning to control Najaf and kill all religious clerics during religious celebrations of Ashura, or 10th of Muharram in the hegira calendar. Ashra commemorates the slaughter of Imam al-Hussein Ibn Ali, Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, in the battle of Taf in Karbala in the hegira year 61 (680 in the Gregorian calendar). AmR (S) 96