Al-Hashemi’s team quit case over court ruling

Lawyers for Iraq’s fugitive Sunni vice president, charged with running death squads, quit the case yesterday in protest after judges rejected their request for evidence for his defence.

The development underscored Tariq al-Hashemi’s claim that he will not get a fair trial on charges he denies and says are politically motivated.

The case threatens to paralyse Iraq’s government by fuelling simmering Sunni and Kurdish resentments against the Shiite prime minister, who critics claim is monopolising power.

“It became clear that there is a hidden political decision to incriminate me,” al-Hashemi said in a statement after the court adjourned yesterday afternoon.

At the outset of the trial’s second day, al-Hashemi’s defence team demanded to be allowed to pull various records to help refute earlier testimony that the vice president and his son-in-law had ordered bodyguards to kill security and government officials. Their aim was to prove that al-Hashemi was not in communication with the bodyguards at the time he allegedly ordered the assassinations.