(VOI) – A legislator from the Sadrist bloc, or Iraqis loyal to Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, threatened on Saturday that the bloc would adopt a "firm stand" if security forces banned Friday prayers in the mosques belonging to the bloc."We would use all legitimate legal and constitutional means available against whoever denies access to the next Friday prayers," Uqeil Abdul-Hussein told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq – (VOI) on the sidelines of a press conference in Baghdad on Saturday. Security forces on Friday banned the Friday prayers in al-Amil neighborhood, southern Baghdad, and the Iraqi port city of Basra, 590 km south of Baghdad, and shot rounds to disperse masses of worshippers.
Abdul-Hussein called on the "cabinet, as the sponsor for the constitution, to respect the rights to perform prayers." The Sadrists, who hold 30 out of a total 275 seats in the Iraqi Parliament, had quit the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, in which they used to occupy six ministerial posts, in April 2007 due to "the government's failure to come up with a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq."