Baghdad: Iraq’s fugitive vice president, Tareq Al Hashemi, a top critic of Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki, was handed a second death sentence in absentia yesterday, a spokesman said.
Defence lawyers for Hashemi, who has been abroad since charges of running a death squad were filed against him in December, protested they had not been informed of the sentencing hearing over a plot to murder a security official.
Hashemi, one of Iraq’s most senior Sunni officials, has dismissed the charges brought against him by Maliki’s Shia-led government as politically-motivated.
“The central criminal court of Iraq issued a death sentence against Tareq Al Hashemi and Ahmed Qahtan, because he (Hashemi) urged his guards to put a bomb on a car belonging to an interior ministry officer,” said judicial spokesman Abdelsattar Bayraqdar.
Bahraini jailed six months over ‘king insult’ tweet
DUBAI: A court in Bahrain sentenced a cyber activist to six months in jail yesterday after convicting him of defaming the Gulf kingdom’s monarch in comments posted online, lawyers said.
The man, whose name was not given, is part of a group of four facing the same charge over comments posted on Twitter and who were arrested last month.
The remainder of the group will be sentenced by the same criminal court on Monday, the lawyers said.Agencies
