Fed: Iraqi Shi'ite terror leader vows to protect people: report

AAP General News (Australia)
12-20-2006
Fed: Iraqi Shi'ite terror leader vows to protect people: report

SYDNEY, Dec 20 AAP - Iraq's most notorious Shi'ite death squad leader, Abu Deraa, has
vowed to protect his people against the US-led coalition forces and opposing Sunni terrorists.

After negotiations through intermediaries, the elusive warlord Abu Deraa agreed to
his first face-to-face interview with a foreign journalist from Australia's Fairfax newspapers.

"I'll be the first and the last to defend my people and my creed from troublemakers,"

he told Fairfax.

Abu Deraa has become the most notorious leader of the Shi'ite death squads whose tit-for-tat
campaign of sectarian cleansing forces thousands of Shi'ite and Sunni families to flee
their communities, Fairfax reports.

"You hear how the Shia are dying," Abu Deraa said in a private home in Sadr City,
a Shi'ite stronghold in Baghdad.

"But I never act unless I'm sure and have proof from witnesses who swear that my targets
have killed my Shia brothers - then I find a solution.

"Shi'ite families are weak when their sons have been killed.

"They cannot defend themselves, so they ask for my help."

The death squads have been kidnapping, torturing and murdering their way through whole
communities.

But Abu Deraa remains defiant on the Koran's prohibition on killing.

"I'm the first to say it is haram (forbidden) to spill good Iraqi blood, but when it
comes to people who plant car-bombs to kill our women and children, I'm ready for them,"

he said.

AAP vpm/srp

KEYWORD: ABU DERAA

2006 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.