Iraq's vice president Tareq al-Hashemi sentenced to death
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...-to-death.html
Iraq's vice-president Tareq al-Hashemi sentenced to death
Iraq's vice-president was convicted of murder and sentenced to death on Sunday as a fresh wave of sectarian violence hit the country leaving 56 people dead.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Telegraph
Tareq al-Hashemi, the country's most senior Sunni politician under a sensitive power-sharing agreement, was accused of running death squads during the civil war that followed the American and British invasion in 2003. The court ruling will have little practical effect, as he fled Baghdad when the charges were laid and is now in exile in Turkey. But they leave a gaping void at the heart of Iraqi politics, at a time when the Shia prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is asserting ever greater authority over the country.
To balance the Shia, the country's largest grouping, there is a presidential council featuring a Kurdish president and Sunni and Shia vice-presidents. Although the worst of the civil war may be in the past, there is no sign of an end to the continuing regular attacks by Sunni terror groups associated with al-Qaeda. Another 56 people were killed in a wave of bombings across the country yesterday.
The attacks focused on military and security targets across the country, with 11 cities struck. In the worst, 14 people were killed by a double car-bomb outside a shrine in the south of the country. Eleven soldiers were killed by gunmen and a subsequent bomb at a security post in the town of Dujail north of Baghdad. Seven would-be recruits in a queue to join an oil company's security detail were killed by a car bomb in the northern city of Kirkuk.
Such outbursts of violent, though regular, are nevertheless fewer than during the height of the fighting, which was largely brought under control when Iraqi and American forces managed to defeated Shia militias and Sunni groups were persuaded to turn on al-Qaeda. Mr Hashemi's Iraqi Islamic Party has been involved in the political process ever since the first parliamentary elections, but he was also accused of links to Sunni attacks on Shia targets, leading to the charges against him. He was charged last December despite having been vice-president since 2006.
He alleged that Mr Maliki, whose Shia-led State of Law party lost the 2010 elections but was able to forge a governing coalition with smaller more radical Shia parties, was attempting to get rid of a political and sectarian rival. He and his son-in-law, Ahmed Qahtan, were convicted of the murder of a Shia brigadier-general and a lawyer and sentenced to death by hanging. Mr Hashemi originally fled to Iraq's Kurdish Autonomous Region, where he was given sanctuary. He has since moved to Turkey after a brief stay in Qatar.
I can see in the very near future (what with the Syrian troubles and so on) an independent Kurdish state being established in northern Iraq and eastern Syria - something that would cause great concerning for Turkey in the east. Not that it's a bad thing, if the Kurdish want independence then they have every right to declare it. But what a mess Iraq is, a weak government with attempted coup de'tats against the Vice President and vice versa - you could even label it as a failed state now.
Mission accomplished, as they said.
Thoughts?
