In Iraq, the anger of young Shiites against Tehran

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On the death poster that presents him as a "martyr of the revolution" and "servant of Imam Hussein", Al-Radoud Ali Wissam has the boyish face of the boy just out of adolescence. Married and father of a young child at 19, he was shot in the heart on 4 November in front of the Iranian consulate in Kerbala, on the sidelines of demonstrations against power, which convulse the holy Shiite city , since October. Far from the image of "saboteurs" attributed by the Iraqi authorities to the young men who set fire to the building that night with cries of "Iran outside", at the cost of four deaths, his father, Wissam Chaker, grieved by grief, describes a serious and pious student who "Manifested peacefully for his rights. "

Al-Radoud Ali Wissam was raised in the religiosity of the holy city, entirely devoted to Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and founding figure of Shia Islam, the mausoleum of which the golden dome dominates the center historical. He grew up in the miserable periphery, in one of the many neglected shanty towns of the authorities, which gave the bulk of the volunteers left to fight, in 2014, the Islamic State organization in the ranks of the Shiite militias of the Popular Mobilization (MP) after the fatwa of Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani. The destruction of hundreds of houses in an operation to eradicate shantytowns by the authorities, without warning, in September, fed the protest. "He wanted a better future. Students have masters, but no job. They become carriers of stones. Government gives contracts to foreign companies and their workersregrets the father, a fighter of the MP.

Father accuses the government "Corrupt"but is risking a weary voice: "All are corrupt, even the leaders of the MP, who used us to take power. We want them to fall. Al-Sistani told us to continue until we get our rights. " But embarrassment, and perhaps fear, hides his voice, evoking the circumstances of the martyr's death. "My son did not say," Iran, outside ". He was across the street from the consulate. We have nothing against the Iranian people "he says. Al-Radoud Ali Wissam welcomed eleven Iranian pilgrims in the modest family home in mid-October during the pilgrimage to Arbain. Fourteen million Shiites – including nearly three million Iranians – have reached Kerbala on foot to mark the end of the forty days of mourning for the death of Imam Hussein, assassinated in 680 by the troops of the Umayyad caliph Yazid, during Battle of Kerbala.