Four bodyguards of two Iraqi MPs linked to a fugitive Sunni Arab deputy accused of ordering an April 2007 bombing of Parliament have been arrested, a top security official said on Thursday."The investigating magistrate ordered the arrest of four bodyguards of MPs Ahmad Radhi and Ali al-Sajri," the spokesman for Baghdad's military security command, General Qassem Atta, told AFP.
"They are accused of having taken fugitive Deputy Mohammad al-Daini to an undisclosed location." Iraqi authorities started a manhunt for Daini Wednesday after his immunity was lifted and he was prevented from fleeing the country on a Royal Jordanian flight to Amman.
The MP, an ex-member of an elite Saddamist force, was accused Sunday of ordering the bombing two years ago in the Parliament's canteen, an attack which killed eight people including a fellow parliamentarian of the same party.
As part of a non-sectarian law and order campaign, the authorities on Monday arrested 11 Shiite policemen over a spate of killings and kidnappings of Sunnis, including the murder of Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi's sister.
Atta said the judge questioned the MPs' bodyguards "and decided to arrest them for complicity. They took Daini to the airport so he could leave the country, and when he was prevented from doing so they took him to an unknown destination." MPs voted to lift Daini's parliamentary immunity just hours after he was barred from flying out from Baghdad airport, where he was refused an exit stamp at passport control.
Daini, who has insisted on his innocence, was not arrested at the airport as he still had parliamentary immunity at the time.
On Sunday, reporters were shown taped confessions - also broadcast on television - by a nephew and a security guard of Daini who said they had carried out several attacks for him. "The suicide bomber entered with an authorization paper from Mohammad al-Daini and blew himself up at the parliament," nephew Riad Ibrahim al-Daini said on the video, adding that he had taken the assailant to the scene.
The MP has dismissed the charges as politically motivated "fabrication" due to his party's defense of human rights. "Mohammad al-Daini is on the run but we are after him because the arrest warrant is now valid," Atta told AFP Wednesday.