(US & Iraqi)Troops arrest (Shiite) mayor, giving rise to peaceful protests

[sabra]

http://www.navytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1159986.php

Troops arrest mayor, giving
rise to peaceful protests


MAHMUDIYAH, Iraq — U.S. and Iraqi forces arrested the Shiite Muslim mayor suspected of helping abduct rival Sunnis in this town south of Baghdad, prompting competing and peaceful protest marches on Friday by the town’s Shiite and Sunni communities.

Brig. Gen. Stewart Rodeheaver, commander of the Georgia National Guard’s 48th Brigade, said Mahmudiyah’s Shiite mayor is suspected of numerous illegal acts, and is being held at the brigade’s detention facility outside Baghdad. The town’s Sunnis believe, and U.S. officers seem to agree, that the mayor was involved in illegally abducting local Sunnis.

Mahmudiyah is part of the “Triangle of Death” south of Baghdad, where Sunnis and Shiites have engaged in a cycle of violence and intimidation that occasionally has seen Iraq’s political and sectarian conflicts turn deadly. Local Sunnis regularly tell U.S. officials that Iranian-backed Shiite militias are behind the violence. But Rodeheaver described the mayoral wrongdoing as simply “local tribal Sunni-Shiite” tension.

About 200 local Sunnis marched to the U.S. military base on Mahmudiya’s outskirts on Friday and presented Iraqi and U.S. military officials with a list of names of relatives they believed were abducted by Shiites posing as Iraqi security troops.

[Roland99]

1. Only a matter of time before Negroponte intervenes and the guy is let go.