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Amit R. Paley of the Washington Post has penned a not-very-flattering profile of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric who heads the Mahdi Army militia in Iraq.

We learn that Sadr was once nicknamed "Moqtada Atari" for his love of video games and that some of the locals see him as a little "thick." He was "known in his youth for stuffing himself with as many as a dozen falafel at a time." Sadr also has a terrible sense of humor, apparently:

Moqtada, his friends said, has always been a prankster, in ways both innocuous and macabre. Once, he made a big show of offering a 7-Up to a student, who was then surprised to learn that Sadr had filled the bottle with water. In a more recent incident, he anonymously sent Shaibani, the aide, text messages threatening to kill him, only to reveal later with laughter that it was all a practical joke.

Ha, ha?