Baghdad: The Iraqi government seized the west Baghdad headquarters of a powerful Sunni group yesterday, cordoning off the building and accusing the group of supporting Al Qaida, officials said.
The Association of Muslim Scholars, a hardline Sunni clerics group with links to insurgents, has its headquarters in the Umm Al Qura mosque in the capital's Sunni-dominated Gazaliyah neighbourhood.
Iraqi security forces dispatched by the Sunni Endowment, a government agency that cares for Sunni mosques and shrines, surrounded the mosque complex at 9am yesterday and demanded that the building be evacuated before noon, the association said in a statement posted on its web site.
Employees were told to remove all personal belongings and even haul out furniture, that troops said would be destroyed if left behind, it said. The group also operates a radio station from the mosque, and its transmission was cut as well, the statement said.
The final sounds on the air were of an announcer apologising to listeners and telling them he was being forced out of the building, the group said. The head of the Sunni Endowment held a news conference at the mosque later yesterday, accusing the clerics group of supporting Al Qaida.
"The Association of Muslim Scholars has regrettably been attacking any tribal awakening, resistance or worshippers whenever they form a force to purge their neighbourhoods of Al Qaida elements. The association has always justified killing and assassinations carried out by Al Qaida," Ahmad Abdul Gafoor Al Samarraie, the Sunni Endowment chief, told reporters.
"The association no longer has a place here... These headquarters now belong to the Sunni Endowment," he said.
Earlier, another Sunni Endowment official said the government had plans to renovate the Umm Al Qura mosque, which sits on government property.
"We have nothing against the association ... and its members, but we have plans to renovate the mosque and construct more buildings inside," the official said on condition of anonymity.
"However, this matter has been seen by the association as a threat to their existence in the mosque," the official said.
The association has long opposed the US military presence in Iraq and has often been at odds with the Shiite-backed government. The association spearheaded the Sunni boycott of the January 2005 elections, which fuelled the insurgency.
Employees refuse to leave
A spokesman for the association, Mohammad Bahsar Al Faydi, said that he believed the troops raiding the mosque were not government forces but Al Samarraie's personal guards.
"We don't understand why the Sunni Endowment acted this way," said Al Faydhi, who lives in Jordan.
Some employees who were already inside the Umm Al Qura building when forces arrived staged a sit-in, refusing to leave by the noon deadline, the association said. Security forces were preventing any vehicles from entering the compound, it said.
