Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, making a rare intervention into politics ahead of an election on May 12, said on Friday Iraqis should oppose the return to power of "corrupt" leaders who had failed the country in the past.
Iraqis "should avoid falling in the trap of those ... who are corrupt and those who failed, whether they have been already tried or not," Sistani said in his weekly sermon, read by one of his representatives and broadcast on television.