An arrested Shi’ite militia leader in Iraq on Monday has threatened that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s political bloc members will be targeted unless he is released within 24 hours.
Speaking to a foreign news agency on a mobile phone of a prison guard, Wathiq al-Battat said he was being held in a solitary confinement without any access to his family or a lawyer.
Battat was detained in Baghdad on January 2 six weeks after his Iranian-backed al-Mukhtar Army fired six mortar bombs from southern Iraq into the Saudi desert. The attack did not cause any casualty.
According to Battat, the attack was a warning to stop Saudi Arabia from interfering in Iraq.
He warned that his Mukhtar Army would start killing members of Maliki’s State of Law bloc running in April elections unless he is freed.
“The Mukhtar Army is giving them 24 hours,” he said. “If I am not released all State of Law’s candidates will be killed…one by one. Their homes and their headquarters will be targeted.”
He added that State of Law figures serving in the present government would also be on his hit list.
Battat told the news agency that he was hiding his identity from Sunni Muslim militants detained in the same prison, whose location he asked not to be mentioned.
“I am not a terrorist. I do not have a feud with the state or its institutions and I will not target the police or army.
“My targets are al Qaeda and the takfiri country (Saudi Arabia) which exports terrorism to neighbouring countries,” he said
Battat accused that the authorities have detained him for a “sectarian balance” after the arrest of an outspoken Sunni lawmaker Ahmed al-Alwani in the city of Ramadi on December 28 in a raid in which Alwani’s brother and several bodyguards were killed.
Maliki has combated Shi’ite as well as Sunni militias since he took power in 2006 at the head of a Shi’ite-led government.