Hardening his rhetoric as he sweeps north through the country, Ayatollah Muhammad Baqr al-Hakim spent his first weekend in Iraq hammering home his twin message that the country must have an Islamic and independent government free from all foreign interference.

After crossing into Basra from Iran on Saturday, the 66-year-old leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri) has been addressing tribal leaders and crowds of followers packed into stadiums in towns leading to his eventual destination, Najaf, one of the holiest Shia cities.

Astute and articulate, he has pitched himself as a fighter — his Badr brigades fought Saddam Hussein’s forces in the 1991 uprising — preacher and politician. He also portrays himself as the inheritor of the early Shia martyr Hussein’s refusal to bow down before invaders — a clear reference to the British and Americans.

“We don’t fear these forces. This nation wants to preserve its independence and the coalition forces must leave this country,” he told a crowd of 4,000 in al-Nasiriyah.

Later, in Samawa, 60,000 people hung from rooftops and stadium lights to hear him say: “We must never permit the presence of foreigners and we must not be their slaves. We must show that we can rule ourselves.”

The crowd, carefully primed by Sciri stewards leading the chants, shouted: “Yes! Yes for Islam! No Americans! No Saddam!” For a man who has had a quarter of a century to rehearse these speeches, Ayatollah al-Hakim’s choice of words is revealing. His rhetoric is a lilting, nuanced delivery that builds to a crescendo of finger-stabbing that has provoked crowds to the traditional Shia response of beating their chest in unison, creating an effect akin to drums of war. Motifs repeated throughout speeches on the trail are: Islam, democracy, Sharia (Islamic law), unity, freedom and tolerance of other religions.

Tellingly, he insists repeatedly that Iraqis can “secure” and “rebuild” their own country — one reference a swipe at coalition forces for failing to stop looting, the other a message that General Jay Garner’s Organisation for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance is not needed in Iraq.

After he fled Saddam in 1980 — escaping the fate meted out to 50 of his family members, who were murdered or “disappeared” under the Iraqi dictator’s rule — many regarded him as yesterday’s man, unlikely to pose a serious threat to his two main Shia rivals — Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ali al-Sistani and the younger, less senior but ruthlessly ambitious Hojatoleslam Moqtada Sadr, whose followers are blamed by many for the murder of a cleric last month.

The prospect of strife between these three schools has left coalition forces warily watching Ayatollah al-Hakim’s well-organised procession.

Lieutenant-Colonel Ronnie McCourt, a British Army spokesman in Basra, said: “One has to see. If he starts to create agitation and stir up the crowds, he’s obviously going to be a concern. But we are restoring democracy here. We are hoping he takes a sensible course and acts moderately.”

Some Iraqis, even those who describe themselves as religious, are also not convinced. In Samawa last night one video store-owner grumbled that the majority of those at the rally were “uneducated thieves and looters who would go and work themselves up about anyone”.

While not blaming Ayatollah al-Hakim’s followers alone, he said that incitement by hardline preachers at Friday prayers had led to attacks on a cinema, and threats against himself for selling films featuring scantily clad women.

Yet so far critics have been less vocal than supporters, thousands of whom even turned up at the remote Shalamcheh border crossing near Basra on Saturday to witness the ayatollah’s arrival back on Iraqi soil through a white-gloved honour guard of Iranian commandos. Plans for a public address had to be cancelled, and Ayatollah al-Hakim drove over the 2ft hump of dirt separating Iran and Iraq in a white Toyota Land Cruiser festooned with bodyguards without giving the crowd a single glimpse of him.Chanting and waving flags, they pursued in a convoy of buses, cars and overloaded lorries.

Abandoned at the crossing was a Shia butcher, who had dragged ten sheep all the way to the border to sacrifice them in the great man’s honour. He shrugged, threw them to the ground and spilt their blood on the empty tarmac anyway.

• Ashraf Base, Iraq: Iranian rebels in Iraq have begun to surrender to US forces under a deal that effectively ends the heavily armed People’s Mujahidin as a fighting force. US forces in Iraq said in a statement that the decades-old group agreed at high-level talks that within a week all of its thousands of fighters would be detained by US. The Mujahidin, labelled terrorists by Washington, also accepted that all their heavy weapons would be placed in a desert base near the Iranian border and controlled by US troops.

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