BAGHDAD: In a move that has heightened communal and political tensions in Iraq, the fugitive Vice President Tareq Al-Hashemi, has been convicted of murder yesterday and sentenced to death by hanging.
Hashemi, tried in absentia, has dismissed all charges against him as politically motivated. The court also tried his secretary and son-in-law Ahmed Qahtan in absentia and sentenced him to death. The trial for the murder of a lawyer, a brigadier general and a top security official that opened in May covered the first of some 150 charges against Hashemi, who has been accused of running a death squad, and his bodyguards.
Meanwhile, a series of more than 25 attacks across Iraq killed 56 people and wounded over 250 others on Saturday and yesterday, with security forces and markets among the targets. Before midnight on Saturday, gunmen opened fire on an army checkpoint near Balad north of Baghdad and a roadside bomb exploded when additional soldiers arrived at the scene.
Eleven soldiers, including two officers, were killed and eight others wounded, a medical source at Balad hospital said.
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Death sentence for VP compounds Iraq chaos
