Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani is headed for London via Beirut.
The Al-Khoei foundation, a Shiite institution based in London with which Sistani has close links, said that the cleric was expected to arrive at London’s main Heathrow airport at 2:00 pm.
“I’ve heard three of his arteries are blocked,” said Al-Khoei spokesman Eagle Abdlemalik. “I can’t say how long he is going to stay.”
“He was persuaded to leave Najaf obviously because of his critical state of health,” the spokesman said, adding that Sistani would be residing at his offices in north London during his stay in Britain.
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Iraqi national security adviser Muwaffaq al-Rubaie said that Sistani’s trip to London had been planned for weeks.Sistani, who is not suffering from a terminal illness, was accompanied by his son, doctor and an assistant, he added.
The senior cleric is expected to stay in London for up to a week.
“I can tell you that I was intimately and personally involved in this trip. It has been organised for several weeks. I took him from Najaf and sat him inside the plane… I took him from door to door”.
al-Rubaie denied that al-Sistani had been removed from Najaf in order to facilitate the crushing of Moqtada al-Sadr by the American occupying forces.