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Iraqi Official Was Behind 150 Attacks, Judges Say
By JACK HEALY
Published: February 16, 2012
BAGHDAD — A panel of Iraqi judges said Thursday that death squads commanded by Iraq’s Sunni vice president carried out 150 attacks over six years against religious pilgrims, security officers and political foes.
In a report offering details of their investigation into the politically divisive case, the nine judges, drawn from all of Iraq’s main ethnic and religious factions, appeared to offer support to terrorism charges leveled by the Iraqi authorities in December against Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi. Mr. Hashimi, a Sunni Muslim, has said that he is innocent and that the allegations are part of a political vendetta by Iraq’s Shiite-led government.
The earlier accusations, lodged the day after the last American troops left Iraq, set off political chaos in Iraq’s shaky power-sharing government and raised fears of new sectarian violence.
The crisis has ebbed in recent weeks as members of a largely Sunni political bloc have returned to the cabinet and Parliament, ending what proved to be a fruitless boycott. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite, and other leaders are now trying to set up a national conference to discuss the crisis and the path forward, but few observers expected them to quickly resolve disputes over the country’s oil resources and imbalance of power.
There is also no quick resolution in sight in the case against Mr. Hashimi, who evaded arrest by fleeing to Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish north and has said that he cannot receive a fair trial here in the capital. Iraq’s judiciary has refused to move the case outside Baghdad, raising the possibility of a trial in absentia.
On Thursday, the panel of judges said that Mr. Hashimi’s bodyguards had carried out the 150 attacks from 2005 to 2011.
Abdul-Sattar Bayrakdar, a spokesman for Iraq’s Supreme Judiciary Council, would not discuss evidence of the attacks or say precisely how Mr. Hashimi had been involved. Security officials have accused Mr. Hashimi of personally handing envelopes of cash to his bodyguards after successful bombings and assassinations.
The latest accusations against Mr. Hashimi, like the original charges against him, appear to rely heavily on confessions from bodyguards and others who worked in his office. More than four dozen of his guards and other staff members have been arrested since December, according to statements from Iraqi officials. It was unclear how many were still being held.
The judiciary also blamed Mr. Hashimi’s bodyguards for a Dec. 22 bombing that ripped through an upper-middle-class Baghdad neighborhood just days after the Iraqi authorities announced the arrest warrant against the vice president. In that attack, an ambulance packed with explosives blew up outside the offices of the government’s Integrity Commission, killing 20 to 30 people.
Mr. Bayrakdar, the judiciary spokesman, urged wounded victims and relatives of the dead to go to court to be heard. And one of the nine members of the panel, Saad al-Lami, angrily told reporters that Mr. Hashimi had publicly named him as one of the investigating judges, exposing him to threats on his life.
“I’d like to tell Hashimi that I’ll hold him fully responsible if anything bad happens to me or my family,” the judge said.
Neither Mr. Hashimi nor a spokeswoman for his political coalition, Iraqiya, could be reached for comment on Thursday.
Elsewhere in Iraq, Iraqi and American officials were looking forward to relocating hundreds of Iranian exiles on Friday as a first step toward resolving years of tension, uncertainty and violence surrounding the exiles. They are members of the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, a group opposed to the Iranian leadership that allied with Saddam Hussein in the 1980s and found refuge at Camp Ashraf in northeastern Iraq.
The Iraqi government wants to close the camp and move the group’s members out of the country. The group is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States, though many high-ranking American officials have lobbied to remove that designation.
Under a plan brokered by the United Nations with Iraqi and American support, the camp’s 3,400 residents would move first to a former American military base in Baghdad, and then to other countries. With about 400 expected to leave with the first wave, a State Department spokeswoman on Thursday urged that the relocation proceed “peacefully and without delay.”
Omar al-Jawoshy contributed reporting.
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By JACK HEALY
Published: February 16, 2012
BAGHDAD — A panel of Iraqi judges said Thursday that death squads commanded by Iraq’s Sunni vice president carried out 150 attacks over six years against religious pilgrims, security officers and political foes.
In a report offering details of their investigation into the politically divisive case, the nine judges, drawn from all of Iraq’s main ethnic and religious factions, appeared to offer support to terrorism charges leveled by the Iraqi authorities in December against Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi. Mr. Hashimi, a Sunni Muslim, has said that he is innocent and that the allegations are part of a political vendetta by Iraq’s Shiite-led government.
The earlier accusations, lodged the day after the last American troops left Iraq, set off political chaos in Iraq’s shaky power-sharing government and raised fears of new sectarian violence.
The crisis has ebbed in recent weeks as members of a largely Sunni political bloc have returned to the cabinet and Parliament, ending what proved to be a fruitless boycott. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite, and other leaders are now trying to set up a national conference to discuss the crisis and the path forward, but few observers expected them to quickly resolve disputes over the country’s oil resources and imbalance of power.
There is also no quick resolution in sight in the case against Mr. Hashimi, who evaded arrest by fleeing to Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish north and has said that he cannot receive a fair trial here in the capital. Iraq’s judiciary has refused to move the case outside Baghdad, raising the possibility of a trial in absentia.
On Thursday, the panel of judges said that Mr. Hashimi’s bodyguards had carried out the 150 attacks from 2005 to 2011.
Abdul-Sattar Bayrakdar, a spokesman for Iraq’s Supreme Judiciary Council, would not discuss evidence of the attacks or say precisely how Mr. Hashimi had been involved. Security officials have accused Mr. Hashimi of personally handing envelopes of cash to his bodyguards after successful bombings and assassinations.
The latest accusations against Mr. Hashimi, like the original charges against him, appear to rely heavily on confessions from bodyguards and others who worked in his office. More than four dozen of his guards and other staff members have been arrested since December, according to statements from Iraqi officials. It was unclear how many were still being held.
The judiciary also blamed Mr. Hashimi’s bodyguards for a Dec. 22 bombing that ripped through an upper-middle-class Baghdad neighborhood just days after the Iraqi authorities announced the arrest warrant against the vice president. In that attack, an ambulance packed with explosives blew up outside the offices of the government’s Integrity Commission, killing 20 to 30 people.
Mr. Bayrakdar, the judiciary spokesman, urged wounded victims and relatives of the dead to go to court to be heard. And one of the nine members of the panel, Saad al-Lami, angrily told reporters that Mr. Hashimi had publicly named him as one of the investigating judges, exposing him to threats on his life.
“I’d like to tell Hashimi that I’ll hold him fully responsible if anything bad happens to me or my family,” the judge said.
Neither Mr. Hashimi nor a spokeswoman for his political coalition, Iraqiya, could be reached for comment on Thursday.
Elsewhere in Iraq, Iraqi and American officials were looking forward to relocating hundreds of Iranian exiles on Friday as a first step toward resolving years of tension, uncertainty and violence surrounding the exiles. They are members of the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, a group opposed to the Iranian leadership that allied with Saddam Hussein in the 1980s and found refuge at Camp Ashraf in northeastern Iraq.
The Iraqi government wants to close the camp and move the group’s members out of the country. The group is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States, though many high-ranking American officials have lobbied to remove that designation.
Under a plan brokered by the United Nations with Iraqi and American support, the camp’s 3,400 residents would move first to a former American military base in Baghdad, and then to other countries. With about 400 expected to leave with the first wave, a State Department spokeswoman on Thursday urged that the relocation proceed “peacefully and without delay.”
Omar al-Jawoshy contributed reporting.
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