TEHRAN, 31 August 2003 — As governments around the world condemned the devastating car bombing in the Iraqi city of Najaf that killed Iraq’s leading Shiite politician Mohammad Baqer Al-Hakim and 82 others, Iran yesterday entered three days of national mourning over the assassination of Al-Hakim.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei decreed the period of state mourning to honor Al-Hakim, who spent 23 years in exile in Iran before triumphantly returning to his homeland in May following the ouster of Saddam Hussein. Black banners were draped across Tehran and television presenters were also decked out in black. All newspapers published a photo of the “martyr,” complete with outpourings of grief.
Tehran not only sheltered, but gave financial backing to Al-Hakim’s Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the main Iraqi Shiite opposition group to the Saddam regime.
Following the Najaf blast, Iran redoubled its bitter rhetoric against the US-led occupation forces. Khamenei blamed those responsible for the attack of “doing a service to the Zionists and Americans,” ushering in “new proof of the insecurity and instability spread by the occupiers in Iraq.”
At the UN, Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on all groups in Iraq to refrain from further acts of violence following the attack, which came a little over a week after another deadly bombing wrecked the UN headquarters in Baghdad. Annan reaffirmed “his belief that only a credible, inclusive and transparent political process can lead to peace and stability in Iraq.”
In a statement released late Friday, US President George W. Bush denounced the car bombing and said US forces would help hunt those responsible. “I strongly condemn the bombing today outside the Imam Ali mosque,” he said hours after the attack. This vicious act of terrorism was aimed at Hakim and at the hopes of the people of Iraq for freedom, peace, and reconciliation, Bush said in the statement.
In Moscow, Russia’s Foreign Ministry described the bombing as a “major terrorist act aimed at breaking the process of normalizing the situation in Iraq, which is in a position of chronic instability.” Without referring specifically to the Najaf bombing, President Vladimir Putin said greater United Nations involvement was needed in Iraq to end the escalating violence there. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer condemned what he calle the “odious crime”, while French Foreign Ministry spokesman Herve Ladsous said the government condemned the bombing “in the strongest possible terms.”
Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio said the attack “shows once again the necessity for the international community to fight terrorism.” Turkey, which is mulling a US request to send troops to Iraq to serve in an international security force, also denounced what it called “this act of terrorism.”
