| Iraqi dissident found murdered in South An Iraqi refugee was found
dead Wednesday in an apartment belonging to an Iraqi opposition group in Tyre.
Walid Ibrahim al-Mayahi, 33, was discovered with a rope around his neck. He appeared to
have been strangled.
Mayahi was staying in a two-room apartment that doubled as an office for supporters of
Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq Sadr, a leading Iraqi Shiite cleric who was murdered along
with his two sons in the southern Iraqi city of Najjaf in 1999.
Unconfirmed reports said that Mayahi had recently gained a visa to travel to the United
States to take part in training with Iraqi opposition forces. But a US Embassy
spokesperson said that there was “no record of granting a visa” to Mayahi.
Mayahi worked at the Sadr Center for Islamic Studies, the center’s head said.
Sheikh Mohammed Bousayri said he suspected Iraqi intelligence agents of killing Mayahi,
who he said had been in Lebanon for about three years and was a member of the Iraqi
National Congress (INC), an umbrella organization of opposition groups.
Security forces detained Bousayri and several other Iraqis for questioning, but said they
had no immediate suspects in the killing.
“There were three people who frequented the center and were known to be Iraqi
intelligence,” Bousayri told Reuters by telephone from a police station in city.
“They had threatened him and also threatened to kill me or kidnap me.”
The INC is one of a host of opposition groups the United States has sought to unite ahead
of a war on Iraq, but has been at odds with Kurdish and Islamist factions over the
political shape of Iraq if Saddam Hussein is toppled.
Mayahi was said to have arrived in South Lebanon several years ago. He lived on handouts
from charities, security officials said. With agencies
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