BAGHDAD: Iraqi security forces on Saturday dispersed around 1,000 supporters of Shia Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr who tried to march to Baghdad’s Green Zone housing foreign embassies, believing a Holy Quran had been desecrated in Denmark.
The protesters were reacting to reports of an apparent desecration of the holy book.
On its Facebook page, the extreme right group Danske Patrioter posted on Friday a video of a man desecrating what seemed to be a Holy Quran and trampling an Iraqi flag.
Copenhagen police deputy chief Trine Fisker told AFP that “not more than a handful” of protesters had gathered on Friday across from the Iraqi embassy.
“I can also confirm there was a book burnt. We do not know which book it was,” she said. “It was quite peaceful.”
In central Baghdad, the protesters gathered in the pre-dawn darkness at Tahrir Square.
“Yes, yes to the Quran!” shouted the protesters, mostly young men.
Some carried portraits of Sadr, who has a following of millions among the country’s majority Shia population and wields great influence over national politics.
Security forces cut two bridges leading to the high-security Green Zone where governmental institutions and foreign embassies are located.
The demonstrators tried to force their way through before officers pushed them back and the protesters eventually dispersed several hours later, after scuffles erupted, an interior ministry official told AFP, speaking anonymously because he was not allowed to brief the media.
Protesters were trying to reach the embassy of Denmark, the official said.
Early Saturday, Iraq’s foreign ministry had condemned “the desecration of the Holy Quran and the Iraqi flag in front of the embassy of Iraq in Denmark”.
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