Careful Who You Arrest

I've ignored this story, but shouldn't have.

The Association of Muslim Scholars, the influential Sunni religious authority, and Iraqi Islamic party, and Iraqi Islamic party, the country's largest Sunni political group, condemned on Saturday, June 24, the American several-hour detention of Iraq's grand mufti Jamal al-Din Abdul Karim al-Dabban.

"[He] represents an Islamic and national symbol and these violations could cause the security situation to deteriorate," warned Sheikh Yahya Ibrahim al-Atwani, a senior AMS official in Tikrit, reported Al-Jazeera.

Sheikh Dabban and his three sons were arrested by American forces at about 5 a.m. in the city of Tikrit, 175 km north of Baghdad.

The Iraqi Islamic party, the country's largest Sunni political group, also condemned the arrest.

The US army released the Sunni religious leader and his two sons.

It apologized, saying the raid on the family's home was based on bad intelligence, an official at the joint US-Iraqi coordination center in Tikrit told Reuters.

Unfortunately, our troops are in a foreign land they probably don't understand well enough. This was a huge mistake and they should have known it. And I'm confused why they would feel a 70 year old was a probable terrorist. At any rate, they should have talked with the man and realised who he was.

To be fair, and I always am of course, I searched (several different ways) for a picture of the cleric and came up with bubkes, nada, zip. So it is reasonable the troops had no idea of who he is and his importance to the Iraqi people.

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