Al-Hashemi sentenced to death

BAGHDAD - Agence France-Presse

Iraq’s fugitive vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, was handed a second death sentence in absentia yesterday, a spokesman said.

Defense lawyers for al-Hashemi, who has been abroad since charges of running a death squad were filed against him in December, protested they had not been informed of the sentencing hearing over a plot to murder a security official.

Al-Hashemi, one of Iraq’s most senior Sunni officials, has dismissed the charges brought against him by al-Maliki’s Shiite-led government as politically-motivated. “The central criminal court of Iraq issued a death sentence against Tariq al-Hashemi and Ahmed Qahtan, because he (Hashemi) urged his guards to put a bomb on a car belonging to an interior ministry officer,” said judicial spokesman Abdelsattar Bayraqdar. Al-Hashemi was handed a first death sentence for three murders in a hearing on Sept. 9.