The leader of Iraq's largest Shia party, Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, died in a Tehran hospital on Wednesday aged 60 after a long battle with lung cancer, five months ahead of key parliamentary elections. "He died a few minutes ago after battling cancer for 28 months," his son Mohsen Hakim told AFP.
He and his brother Ammar had been at their father's bedside. "The passing away of Mr Hakim is a big loss to the Iraqi people and all those who love Iraq," Ammar Hakim told AFP. "He was a leader and had special characteristics which made him a favourite of the people."
Hakim, a cleric who helped establish an opposition movement in exile in Iran in 1982 to battle Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime, returned to Iraq after the US-led invasion of 2003. His Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council swept Shiite areas in first provincial elections after the invasion but in new elections this January the party suffered major losses to the rival list of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
"The body of the head of the SIIC will be transferred to Najaf and the details of the mourning ceremony will be announced in due course," Mohsen Hakim told Iran's Fars news agency, referring to the central Iraqi shrine city where Shiites from around the world are traditionally brought for burial.
The Iranian ISNA news agency said mourners will hold a funeral procession on Thursday at 9:00 am (0430 GMT) from Vali Asr Square in central Tehran to the Iraqi embassy. It did not say when the body would be transferred to Najaf. Hakim, a former heavy smoker, was admitted to hospital on Saturday after he developed a "medical complication", Mohsen Hakim told AFP on Monday.
The cleric, who had been in Tehran for treatment for more than four months, had undergone frequent medical check-ups in the Iranian capital in the past and even visited the United States to see lung cancer specialists. "Mr Hakim died in the hospital at 2:40 pm (1010 GMT)," Iranian state television quoted the head of the medical team treating him at the Masih Daneshvari hospital as saying.
"The advanced stage of cancer had damaged his liver, brain and bones and because of that he died," added the doctor, whom the television identified only by his last name Masjidi. A scion of one of the traditional leading families among Iraq's Shiite majority, Hakim took over the leadership of his party in August 2003 after his brother Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim was assassinated by a massive car bomb in Najaf. He had previously served as deputy leader and head of the party's Badr Brigades military wing. Their father, Grand Ayatollah Mohsen al-Hakim, was one of Shia Islam's top spiritual leaders between 1955 and 1970.
But the family has had to contend not only with the rising influence among poorer Shiites of the radical movement of anti-US cleric Moqtada al-Sadr but also with the increasing power of prime minister Maliki. Hakim's death came just days after the premier confirmed he was breaking his alliance with the SIIC under which he fought the last parliamentary elections in 2005 and will go it alone in the next polls in January.
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