Naseer Al-Nahr, Arab News Staff

BAGHDAD, 21 January 2004 — Asserting their growing clout, thousands of Shiite protesters marched through Baghdad for a second day yesterday, demanding the execution of Saddam Hussein, the dictator who had repressed them for decades.

Some 5,000 people took part in the march yesterday that wound its way from the poor Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City on the outskirts of the capital to Firdous Square, where Saddam’s statue was toppled on April 9, 2003 in a symbolic downfall of his regime.

Also late yesterday, a missile landed in the sprawling US compound in central Baghdad but caused little damage. Unconfirmed reports said one person was injured.

Saddam was captured on Dec. 13 and the Pentagon has designated him a prisoner of war. “The butcher of Iraq is not a POW. He must be punished,” read a massive banner waved by some of the demonstrators.

“Saddam is a war criminal, not a POW .. execute Saddam,” the crowd chanted, waving massive green flags.

The march, which coincided with smaller protests in two other cities, followed a much larger demonstration of 100,000 in Baghdad on Monday to demand direct elections to replace the US-led interim administration.

Shiites, who are believed to be about 60 percent of Iraq’s 25 million people, were kept out of power during Saddam’s 35-year rule by the minority Sunnis.

Since the fall of Saddam, the emboldened Shiites have begun asserting their numerical superiority. Generally supportive of the US invasion last year, Shiite leaders are now posing the biggest political challenge to the US-led administration and its plans for a power transfer this summer.

Leading Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani opposes the US plan that envisages holding 18 regional caucuses in May to choose a transitional legislature. The assembly would then appoint a provisional government to take power on July 1, formally ending the US occupation.

Al-Sistani wants early elections for the new government. But Washington says it is impossible to hold elections so quickly in the absence of a census or electoral rolls. The precarious security condition — reinforced by the suicide bomb blast in Baghdad on Sunday that killed 31 people — makes the exercise even more unfeasible, US officials say. But recognizing that Shiite aspirations cannot be ignored, the United States on Monday asked UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to send a team to Iraq to see if elections were possible. Annan said he would consider the request.

US officials hope the UN team would conclude that early elections are not feasible and convince Al-Sistani to drop his demand.

“What we’re trying to do is find a solution that will work for us and the Iraqi people and provide a legitimate way” to chose a government, US Iraq administrator Paul Bremer told CNN in New York.

Almost a year after the fall of Saddam, the US-administration is still struggling to bring stability to the country. Saddam loyalists and members of his former Baath party continue to launch attacks on US troops, although the frequency has dropped since his capture. A total of 501 US soldiers have died in the conflict.