Iraq Watch: December 9, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Clerics, both Shiite and Sunni, across Iraq on Friday - the Muslim holy day of prayer - urged their followers to go out and cast their vote in the upcoming December 15 parliamentary elections.

Sunnis, believed to compose 20 percent of Iraq's total population, largely boycotted the nations January elections that in turn left the Sunnis with few representatives in parliament.

This time around, however, Sunnis are expected to turn out in mass to cast ballots despite threats and condemnations from largely Sunni insurgent groups such as al-Qaida in Iraq, who view participation in the elections as tantamount to abiding the occupying forces.

Despite anticipated Sunni participation, Shiite and Kurdish political parties are once again expected to dominate the balloting.

Also at Friday sermons, numerous clerics called for the immediate release of the four anti-war Christian peace activists who are currently being held by a group calling itself the "Swords of Righteousness Brigade." The abduction of the four westerners (two Canadians, an American, and a Briton), nearly two weeks ago, has sparked a wave of international outrage. The group has threatened the four with death by Saturday unless its demand that all prisoners currently being held in Iraqi detention centers are released is met.

Ahmed Hassan Taha, cleric at Baghdad's Sunni al-Imam al-Aadam Mosque, said, "We ask those who have authority and power to do their best to release the four European people who work in Christian peace organization, in fact those activists were the first who condemned the war on Iraq."

The influential Sunni group, the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), has also condemned the kidnappings and on Friday Abdel-Salam al-Qubaisi, a spokesman for the organization, called the captives "doves of peace." Al-Qubaisi went on to state that the four, "must be rewarded not imprisoned."

In violence Friday, a roadside bomb exploded in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dora killing one Iraqi police officer. In western Baghdad police discovered the executed bodies of two unidentified people.

North of the capital, in Buhriz, two brothers were gunned down by militants according to the AP. Elsewhere, in Balad, the body of an assassinated Iraqi intelligence officer was found.