Issuing the warrant "represents the bankruptcy of the sectarian government following one scandal after the other," Muslim Scholars Assn. spokesman Mohammed Bashar Faidi told Al Jazeera television. "The decisions of this government are worthless because it only rules the Green Zone," the U.S.-fortified security area in Baghdad that is home to the Iraqi government and the American and British embassies.
Faidi charged Bolani with "supporting terrorism by covering for militias that are killing the Iraqi people," and he told another regional channel that Dhari was in Jordan when the arrest warrant was issued.
Though a ranking cleric, Dhari does not have the stature of Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. But among Sunnis, he has emerged as a vocal representative of Sunni defiance and anger and has become a leader of the fractious community.
Dhari's group, an umbrella organization for Sunni clerics, has been vehemently anti-U.S. and is believed to have close links to elements of the insurgency.
Earlier in the week, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, described Dhari as a hard-liner with "nothing to do but incite sectarian and ethnic sedition."
Violence and crime on the streets of Baghdad on Thursday did not help matters. At least 17 people were killed by bombs and gunmen. In addition, gunmen dressed as police commandos kidnapped 15 people from a tea shop in a mixed neighborhood of the capital, authorities said.
A similar mass kidnapping this week of academics from a Sunni-led Higher Education Ministry office intensified a mounting political crisis. Witnesses said gunmen dressed in government-issued uniforms carted away as many as 150 people. Sunni politicians charge that as many as 80 are still missing, a claim denied by Maliki and the Interior Ministry, which said everyone had been released unharmed.
Maliki has promised to disarm and disband the Shiite militias wreaking havoc on the street. But Sunnis say the government has not done enough, particularly in pursuing leads provided by those who were released after this week's kidnapping of academics.
"The government hasn't moved a finger to investigate," said Salim Abdullah Jabouri, a spokesman for Iraq's main Sunni political bloc, which is part of the ruling government coalition. "The government is either weak or in collusion with the kidnappers or has lost control of the militias."
Sunnis say the lack of concessions they've obtained for their followers has built up sentiment for pulling out of the government.
