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The Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Baghdad, deprived of the use of that sacred property through an adverse decision by a majority of the court of Appeal, which had reversed the verdict of the lower court and awarded the property to the Shi'ahs, and aroused by subsequent action of the Shi'ahs, soon after the execution of the judgment of that court, in converting the building into waqf property (pious foundation), designating it "Husayniyyih," with the purpose of consolidating their gain, realized the futility of the three years of negotiations they had been conducting with the civil authorities in Baghdad for the righting of the wrong inflicted upon them. In their capacity as the national representatives of the Baha'is of Iraq, they, therefore, on September 11, 1928, through the High Commissioner for Iraq and in conformity with the provisions of Art. 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, approached the League's Permanent Mandates Commission, charged with the supervision of the administration of all Mandated Territories, and presented a petition that was accepted and approved by that body in November, 1928. A memorandum submitted, in connection with that petition, to that same Commission, by the Mandatory Power unequivocally stated that the Shi'ahs had "no conceivable claim whatever" to the House, that the decision of the judge of the Ja'fariyyih court was "obviously wrong," "unjust" and "undoubtedly actuated by religious prejudice," that the subsequent ejectment of the Baha'is was "illegal," that the action of the authorities had been "highly irregular," and that the verdict of the Court of Appeal was suspected of not being "uninfluenced by political consideration."
(357:1)
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