According to some Iraqi blogs they have been for quite a while actually. Here's one from yesterday....
http://iraqataglance.blogspot.com/Tuesday, May 11, 2004
Arrest him..
Abdilsattar AlBahadli.. One of Muqtada’s thugs in Basra, he’s the manager of AlSadr office there, on Friday, he urged his thieves that he’ll pay 250000 ID for anyone who can capture a soldier and if the soldier is a female, he can take her as a bondwoman! (I.e. they have all the lawful rights to do anything with her, and she must work as a house maid, they can sell her for others, have sex with her..anything..anything!!) All of that ( according to AlBahadli) is admissible in Islam, the announcer on the TV said “.... all the men who were listening to him were astonished and didn’t pay attention to his call”..
They didn’t, but Al-Mahdi militia of course did ! Murders leading idiots and thieves, what should we expect?
How can we describe Muqtada and his followers? Murders? Thugs? Thieves? Robbers? Kidnappers?..I think all the above are fit..
The coalition and the GC must put an end to M.Al-Sadr and arrest him with his ‘representatives’ right now, he’s so dangerous, it’s silly to negotiate with a murder and wrong to postpone this issue, it must be finished before June 30. M.Al-Sadr is the real threat now, he’ll spoil Iraq in the future..it’s extremely necessary to get rid of him..
It’s told that many of his ‘representatives’ in other provinces were agents for Saddam, they exploited the trust of those who were attending to pray behind them in Mosques, so the people were going to AlBahadli or Alkhaza’li and other ‘religious leaders’ to talk with them in politics, religion..and such things, then when the ‘honest leaders’ find something ‘suspicious’ in those people, at once they pick a pen and write a report to be signed by Ba’thists, then those naive people were being arrested and executed..
........
I read on Al-Iraqia channel that Al-Najaf people arranged a demonstration against the chaos that Muqtada’s followers commit, then M.followers replied by firing at them! I’m waiting for the electric power to watch what happened exactly..
Those crazy murders are roaming in the cities so freely, come on, kill Muqtada and his thugs immediately..
