Iraqi Liquor Store Owners Fear Fundamentalists' Rise (Sadr ok's murder)

[Rose Siding]

snip>
Mr. Sadr's forces have been handing out leaflets in Sadr City, the poor Shiite slum named for two of his relatives, listing nine categories of crimes for which the penalty is death.

"It is allowed to kill: 1. hijackers 2. kidnappers 3. thieves who are trying to disrupt safe family life 4. collaborators, spies and terrorists from Al Qaeda, Wahhabis and Saddamists," the proclamation reads. It goes on to list prostitutes, pimps, pornography sellers, gamblers - and those who sell alcohol.
...
What makes the declaration notable is that it seems to combine several elements of Mr. Sadr's power and political stance: it threatens physical force not only on behalf of issues popular among many devout Shiites, but also, in what may be a gesture to the new interim government, against some of the same enemies of the American and Iraqi forces: kidnappers, hard-core Hussein loyalists and members of Al Qaeda.

"That was the intention," said Sayeed Rahim al-Alaq, deputy head of the committee that drafted the list of offenses. "We are with the government. We are antiterrorists."
...
"The government wants to stabilize law and order, and no one is above the law," Mr. Kadhim {spokesman for the Interior Ministry} said. "It is not justified to kill without a trial."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/16/international/middleeast/16sadr.html

Kadhim needs to take a meeting with Allawi.

But Sadr sure has learned the magic words: "we are antiterrorists"