Trial of wanted Iraqi VP, guards postpones
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E-mail Xinhua, May 3, 2012
The terror trial against the fugitive Sunni Vice president Tariq al-Hashimi and his captured guards was postponed to next Thursday, an Iraqi official television reported on Thursday.
"The trial of Hashimi and his guards has been postponed until May 10," the state-run Iraqia channel said without giving further details.
However, spokesman of the Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) Abdul-Sattar al-Biraqdar told reporters that Hashimi's defense team have made a request before the start of his court hearing Thursday to the Appeals Court contesting that Hashimi's trial must not be in the Criminal Court.
"They requested to transfer Hashimi's trial to the Supreme Federal Court," Birqdar said.
An Iraqi court was scheduled to start its first session over Hashimi who face charges of running death squads against officials of the Shi'ite-dominated government, security forces and Shi'ite pilgrims.
Hashimi will be tried in absentia over more than 150 charges had been filed against him, while 73 of his guards are facing more than 300 charges.
On Monday, Biraqdar said that the court's first session will be devoted to the assassination of a director general in the national security ministry, an officer in the interior ministry and a lawyer.
"There are many crimes that Hashimi and his bodyguards are accused of and we have confessions from them, including the assassination of six judges," Biraqdar also said.
On Dec. 19, 2011, an arrest warrant was issued against Hashimi on charges of running death squad.
Early in the month, Hashimi left Iraq's northern Kurdish region on a tour to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and now Turkey.
The day after he left Iraq, Baghdad demanded extradition for Hashimi, but Qatar refused the request, saying there is no court verdict against Hashimi and that he still holds official title and (diplomatic) immunity.
Soon after the U.S. troops fully withdrew from Iraq late last year, Iraq plunged into serious political row as Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki sought to arrest his political rival Hashimi, a leading member of the Sunni-backed political bloc of Iraqia, over terror charges.
Hashimi, who resorted to the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, rejected the accusations against him that he was running a death squad and said that he is ready to face trial on condition that it is held in Iraq's northern Kurdish region.
However, the SJC, the highest body in the Iraqi judicial system, rejected to transfer the case to the Kurdish region as the region has its own independent judicial system.
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