Assassination of Iraqi Cleric Confirmed by His Family
The family of Ayatollah Bahr-ul-Oloum confirmed the reports on the assassination.
In a communique issued in London, a copy of which was made available to IRNA, they said that the 75-year-old ayatollah had been killed in Iraq under mysterious conditions early Friday.
Iran's Students News Agency (ISNA) had already cited Beirut-based newspapers as saying that unknown people had entered Ayatollah Bahr-ul-Oloum's house in the southern holy city of Najaf and had assassinated him in a brutal manner.
His family has said the cleric had been refusing to cooperate with the Iraqi Baathist regime and was an active campaigner for the release of jailed Shia clerics in the country.
He was also a regular critic of the Iraqi regime for its mistreatment of Shia clerics, the family has said in another part of the communique.
The assassination of Ayatollah Bahr-ul-Oloum brings to four the number of top Shia clerics killed in Iraq over the past four years. The assassins have never been identified.
The Iraqi government, dominated by a repressive one-party apparatus controlled by Saddam Hussein and members of his extended family, has for decades conducted a brutal campaign of murder, summary execution and protracted arbitrary arrest against the religious leaders and followers of the majority Shia Muslim population.
According to amnesty international's reports of 1970's and 1980's, the Iraqi government systematically deported tens of thousands of Shia population to Iran, claiming they were of Persian descent.