Ex-Iraqi lawmaker sentenced to death for killings [View All]

[sabra]

Source: Reuters

BAGHDAD, Jan 25 (Reuters) - A court in Baghdad sentenced a former Iraqi lawmaker to death in absentia for a series of sectarian murders, including a 2007 suicide attack in parliament, a government spokesman said on Monday.

Mohammed al-Daini, a Sunni Arab politician, denied the charges that surfaced almost a year ago that he ordered car bombings, mortar attacks and mass murders during the height of the sectarian violence that followed the U.S.-led invasion.

Daini later disappeared and was captured in October trying to use a fake passport at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, according to the government.

...

Daini, whose parliamentary immunity was lifted last year, said his guards' purported confessions were extracted by force.

Iraqi court officials were not available to confirm the sentence.

Daini was a member of the National Dialogue Front, whose leader Saleh al-Mutlaq is at the centre of a political storm triggered by a government panel's decision to bar about 500 candidates from Iraq's March elections for alleged ties to Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baath party.

Read more: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE60O1CL.htm