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Tariq al-Hashimi found guilty of running death squads .. had to check on the charge .. .. with links ..

Updated: Sept. 10, 2012

Tariq al-Hashimi was a vice president of Iraq, and one of the country’s most prominent Sunni leaders.

In December 2011, a warrant was issued for Mr. Hashimi’s arrest by the Iraqi government led by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a religious Shiite. The warrant accused Mr. Hashimi of running a personal death squad that had assassinated security officials and government bureaucrats.

The sensational charges against Mr. Hashimi threatened to inflame widening sectarian and political conflicts in Iraq just one day after the last convoy of American troops rolled out of the country into Kuwait.

The accusations were broadcast over Iraqi television, in a half-hour of grainy video confessions from three men identified as Mr. Hashimi’s bodyguards. Under the direction of Mr. Hashimi’s top aides, the men said, they gunned down convoys carrying Shiite officials and planted roadside bombs, then detonated them as their targets drove by. One of the men said Mr. Hashimi had personally handed him an envelope with $3,000 after one of the attacks.

Mr. Hashimi, who had fled to Kurdistan in northern Iraq, denied the charges and blasted Mr. Maliki for using the country’s security forces to persecute political opponents, specifically Sunnis.

In February 2012, a panel of Iraqi judges said that death squads commanded by Mr. Hashimi carried out 150 attacks between 2005 and 2011 against religious pilgrims, security officers and political foes.

In April, Mr. Hashimi fled his refuge in northern Iraq, and has been living in self-imposed exile in Turkey, apparently with the blessing of the Turkish government.

In September, Mr. Hashimi was sentenced to death in absentia, hours after a wave of attacks — including suicide car bombings and militant raids in at least 10 cities — killed more than 50 people across the country.

The next day Mr. Hashimi denounced the verdict as “false and unjust,” depicting the court’s finding as “an acquittal, confirming my innocence.” Other Sunni leaders responded angrily to the court’s action, accusing the Shiite-led government of trying to sideline them from a power-sharing arrangement meant to guard against the sectarian violence that continues to plague the country.

For months before the verdict, lawmakers from the Sunni and Kurdish minorities had accused Mr. Maliki of seeking to monopolize power and sought to force him from office through a vote of no confidence.

A Request for Help From Interpol

In May 2012, the international police organization Interpol responded to a request for help from Iraq to arrest Mr. Hashimi. The note by Interpol, known as a “red notice,” was not an international arrest warrant and stopped well short of requiring Turkey, an Interpol member, to take Mr. Hashimi into custody. But it was likely to increase pressure on Turkey to take action against Mr. Hashimi. At the very least, it could keep Mr. Hashimi in Turkey by making it more difficult for him to cross international borders.

Mr. Hashimi is the highest ranking member of the government from the Iraqiya party, a secular coalition that mobilized Sunnis voters to win 90 seats in the 2011 parliamentary elections. That was the highest total for any party, but its leader, Ayad Allawi, was outmaneuvered by Mr. Maliki, who forged alliances with other Shiite groups that allowed him to hold on to the prime minister’s seat.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/tariq_al_hashimi/index.html