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Iraq calls on Kurdistan to arrest and hand
over Sunni VP Hashemi before he flees
4.3.2012
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Iraq's Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi
has been hiding in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan
region since December 2011. Photo: AFP/Safin
Hamed.
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March
4, 2012
BAGHDAD,
— Iraq's government said on Sunday it had demanded
the autonomous Kurdistan region hand over Vice
President Tareq al-Hashemi for trial on charges
of running death squads, a case that caused a
political crisis when U.S. troops withdrew last
year.
The Iraqi interior ministry on Sunday asked
Kurdish authorities to arrest fugitive Sunni
Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi saying he was
planning to flee the country.
Hashemi, a member of the secular Sunni-backed
Iraqiya bloc, has been accused by Baghdad of
running a death squad. He fled to the autonomous
Kurdistan region in December 2011, but
authorities there have so far declined to hand
him over.
"The (Iraqi) interior ministry requested that
the interior ministry of the Kurdistan regional
government carry out the arrest warrant issued
against him and hand him over to judicial
authorities," a statement said.
The ministry has reliable information that
Hashemi intends "to flee from the (Kurdistan)
region to outside Iraq," it said.
The December accusations against the vice
president came amid a wider row between Iraqiya
and the Shiite-led government.
Iraqiya began a boycott of parliament and the
cabinet in December to protest against what it
charged was Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's
centralisation of power,www.ekurd.net
and called for Maliki to respect a power-sharing
deal or quit.
But the bloc's members have since returned to
parliament and the cabinet, as the dispute
between Iraqiya and the government has cooled
off.
Hashemi says the charges are political and has
asked that the case be heard in Kirkuk, a town
divided mainly between Sunni Arabs and Kurds.
The government says the case is purely criminal,
the prosecution is independent and it cannot
intervene. A Baghdad judiciary panel rejected
moving the case to Kirkuk and set a trial for
May in Baghdad.
The leadership of Iraq's Kurdish minority, which
has frequently acted as a mediator in quarrels
between Sunni and Shi'ite Arabs, has become
embroiled in the dispute by playing host to
Hashemi in the northern zone it controls.
Kurdish Deputy Interior Minister Jalal Kareem
told Reuters the regional government had not
received a request from the central government
that it arrest Hashemi and hand him over.
"When we receive the request we will refer it to
the region's council of ministers, as we have a
special status and separate legal and
administrative entity," he said in the Kurdish
regional capital Erbil.
"We will carry out whatever the (Kurdish)
council of ministers decides in response to the
Interior Ministry's request."
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