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Iraq Court Sentences Fugitive VP's Guards to Death
[An Nahar] Four of runaway Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi's bodyguards were sentenced to death on Thursday for killing a civil defense officer and his wife, judicial front man Abdelsattar Bayraqdar said.

The sentences were handed down by the Central Criminal Court for the killings in west Storied Baghdad
...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate...
in 2011, Bayraqdar told AFP.

Death sentences were given to two Hashemi guards on November 8 and six on November 6. The Thursday sentences bring the total number of sentences handed to Hashemi's guards to 12, but it was not immediately clear if some guards had received multiple sentences.

Hashemi, a top Sunni official and a prominent critic of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
... Prime Minister of Iraq and the secretary-general of the Islamic Dawa Party....
, has himself been handed four death sentences on twelve systems in absentia. He dismisses the charges against he and his staff as politically motivated.

Hashemi, his secretary and his guards were originally accused of running a death squad in mid-December 2011 as the last U.S. troops left the country.

He fled to Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region, which declined to hand him over to the federal government, and then embarked on a tour that took him to Qatar and Soddy Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in their national face...
, and finally to Turkey.

Posted by: Fred 2012-11-30
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=357099