Al-Nori is one of several al-Sadr supporters accused in last year's killing of Ayatollah Abdul Majid al-Khoei in Najaf.
NAJAF, Iraq (CNN) -- A prominent aide to renegade Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was arrested early Wednesday in Najaf, according to U.S. military officials and a representative of al-Sadr's office.
His followers are widely blamed for the murder of a coalition-friendly cleric, Abdel Majid al-Khouei, in Najaf in April, soon after his return from exile.
Ali al-Sistani, a Najaf-based ayatollah who is probably the most widely revered scholar among the world's Shias today, has stated that in order to be legitimate such a ruler should win acceptance from a majority of believers.
Al-Sadr made his offer in a letter to Najaf's Shiite clerical hierarchy, according to al-Rubaie.
CNN: Coalition estimates 50 killed in Iraqi cleric's militia
American forces launched further attacks on the militia led by Muqtada al-Sadr in Karbala and Najaf.
He was kidnapped the first week in April by a group calling itself Ansar al-Din and taken to Najaf, where he was joined by another captive, Nabil Razzouk, a Palestinian Christian from East Jerusalem.
Al-Sadr has proposed a partial withdrawal of fighters from Najaf and the turnover of government buildings to Iraqi police, according to national security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie.
CNN: Coalition estimates 50 killed in Iraqi cleric's militia
U.S. forces have been engaging Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army in Najaf, Karbala and Kufa.
Al-Sadr urged people to converge on Najaf, the city south of Baghdad that is holy to Shiite Muslims and where the Sadrists have their main office.
He lamented the situation in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, where radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is holed up with his Mehdi Army militia and surrounded by coalition troops.
Al-Sadr's statement came after what an aide described as direct talks between al-Sadr's representatives and the Iraqi government in Najaf that started Saturday night.
CNN: Al-Sadr calls off fighting, orders compliance with Iraqi security
Two years ago, the U.S. military and Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia fought in and around Najaf and Kufa.
However, the estimated 10, 000 Shia insurgents loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, the rebel cleric leading the uprising in the Najaf area, are not joining in.
He will be buried in his hometown of Najaf, one of the holiest cities for Shiite Muslims, al-Husseini said.
Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shia leader, strongly opposes federalism: in Najaf this week, his men fought fellow Shias.
ECONOMIST: The peril of defeat and the danger of victory | The
U.S. troops remain massed on the outskirts of the holy Shiite city of Najaf, but it remains under the control of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi Army militia.
Coalition officials said they eventually hope to turn over security in Najaf to Iraqi police, a measure called for by an agreement reached between al-Sadr and other Shiite leaders.
The latest sign of this was the assassination attempt on Grand Ayatollah Seyed Mohammed Said al-Hakim, a leading Shia Muslim cleric, in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf on Sunday.
When asked why he released three men suspected of killing Abdul Majid al-Khoei, a London-based cleric stabbed to death on the steps of Najaf's Imam Ali shrine, he says he handed them over to the requisite authority, declining to say what that is.
On Thursday, Abdul Majid al-Khoei, a prominent Shia leader, was stabbed to death in a mosque in Najaf.
Days later Muqtada al-Sadr, the turbulent Shia cleric whose forces this month handed the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala back to the central government's control, echoed the call.
Al-Sadr is the Shiite cleric whose supporters battled U.S. troops for months last year in Najaf and Baghdad.
"This aggression wouldn't have happened had it not been for the presence of the occupiers who brought these companies, " al-Sadr's political committee said in a statement issued by his office in the holy city of Najaf.
The leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), Ayatollah Muhammad Baqr al-Hakim, was among about 100 people killed in a massive car bombing in the Shia holy city of Najaf in August 2003.
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