A member of the Karbala provincial council detained during last year's al-Ziyara al-Shaabaniya pilgrimage confessed to having killed scores of officials and citizens, including a fellow local official, clerics and women, the province's police & operations chief said on Saturday.

"We obtained important confessions from a member of the Karbala provincial council, who had been arrested on the 2^nd day of the al-Ziyara al-Shaabaniya last year," Maj. General Raed Shakir Jawdat said in a press conference he held on Saturday at the Karbala police command headquarters.

"The suspect confessed to having committed serious crimes documented audiovisually. He said that he took part in planning and execution of several assassinations, including the council's anti-corruption committee chairman, Akram al-Zubaidy, representative of Ayatollah Faqih Sayyed Hassan al-Sadr, Sheikh Moslem al-Ta'ie, four members of a humanitarian needs society, a feminist and a number of women under the pretext of prostitution," Jawdat said.

"He also confessed to the assassination of Hamid al-Shereifi, the director of al-Husseiniya district, and others," Jawdat added.

"The suspect has ascribed these crimes to the practice of promoting virtue and renouncing vice, under which he killed women that do not observe the Islamic sharia (law), liquor drinkers and CD sellers. He also said that these killings and assassinations were attended by a witness from the (Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr's) Mahdi Army, who was to give special fatwas on these killings."

Jawdat pointed out that there were special death squads, perhaps the most dangerous of which was a group led by a man called Ali Shereia, who had been kidnapped a month ago.

On August 28, 2007, fierce clashes erupted between security forces and armed groups in the holy Shiite city of Karbala, during which hundreds of residents and security personnel were killed or wounded.

The incidents coincided with al-Ziyara al-Shaabaniya, a Shiite pilgrimage to revive the memory of the birth of the Messiah-like Imam al-Mahdi, the 12th holiest figure for Shiite Muslims.

Karbala, with an estimated population of 572,300 people in 2003, is the capital of the province and is considered to be one of Shiite Muslims' holiest cities.

The city, 110 km south of Baghdad, is one of Iraq's wealthiest, profiting both from religious visitors and agricultural produce, especially dates.

It is made up of two districts, "Old Karbala," the religious centre, and "New Karbala," the residential district containing Islamic schools and government buildings.

At the centre of the old city is Masjid al-Hussein, the tomb of Hussein Ibn Ali, grandsone of the Prophet Muhammad by his daughter Fatima al-Zahraa and Ali Ibn Abi Taleb.

Imam Hussien's tomb is a place of pilgrimage for many Shiite Muslims, especially on the anniversary of the battle, the Day of Ashuraa. Many elderly pilgrims travel there to await death, as they believe the tomb to be one of the gates to paradise. On April 14, 2007, a car bomb exploded about 600 ft (200 m) from the shrine, killing 47 and wounding over 150.

HEYET Net- VOI