Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, head of the Sadrist Movement, on Monday called on his rival Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq’s former prime minister, to quit politics and surrender to the judiciary after secret recordings attributed to al-Maliki were released online. Since last week, a series of leaked recordings attributed to Nouri al-Maliki was published on Twitter by Ali Fadhil, an Iraqi journalist living in the US. In the recordings, Maliki allegedly insults influential Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the Iraqi Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), describing both as “cowards”. The recordings outraged Sadr…