Al Abadi opposed to repeat of Iraq polls
Four people accused of setting fire to storage site arrested
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi said yesterday he opposed any repeat of the May 12 parliamentary election, and warned that anyone who tried to sabotage the political process would be punished, after allegations of electoral fraud raised tensions.
Parliament has demanded a nationwide recount of votes, drawing calls for the election to be re-run. Al Abadi said only the Supreme Court could decide whether to re-run the vote, which was won by a bloc headed by Shiite cleric Moqtada Al Sadr.
On Monday, Al Sadr urged Iraqis to unite rather than squabble over a possible rerun of the election, in a message apparently meant to lower the political temperature after a ballot box storage depot caught fire.
In his weekly news conference, Al Abadi called the fire a deliberate act and said the attorney general would bring charges against those who are trying to undermine the political process.
Al Sadr, a Shiite cleric who once led violent campaigns against the US occupation that ended in 2011, has emerged as a nationalist opponent of powerful Shiite parties allied with neighbouring Iran and as a champion of the poor.
He has warned that certain parties are trying to drag Iraq into a civil war, adding that he would not participate in one.
Al Abadi thanked Al Sadr for a disarmament initiative he has floated and said he hopes the cleric sticks to it.
Meanwhile, Iraq on Monday arrested three police officers and an electoral commission employee after a fire that ravaged a warehouse where votes from May’s legislative election were stored, authorities said.
The arrests
The prosecutor’s office in Al Russafa, a district of eastern Baghdad, “arrested four people suspected of involvement in the arson attack on the electoral commission”, Supreme Judicial Council spokesman Abdul Sattar Bayraqdar said in a statement.
“Three of them are police officers and the other is an employee of the electoral commission,” he added.
The news of the arrests came after Iraqi Interior Minister Qassem Al Araji said there was “no doubt that (the fire) was a deliberate act”.
The blaze occurred on Sunday ahead of a vote recount prompted by allegations of fraud during the election that saw a surprise victory for populist cleric Al Sadr’s electoral alliance with communists and Iraqi voters dumping the old guard.