Sunni politician arrested as Iraq row festers

BAGHDAD: Iraqi authorities said Thursday they arrested a politician belonging to the party of Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, who is at the centre of a row after he was charged with running death squads.

The warrant against Hashemi, who denies the accusations, came shortly after US forces completed their withdrawal from Iraq and has pitted the Shiite-led government against the main Sunni-backed bloc, stoking sectarian tensions.

Riyadh al-Adhadh, deputy chief of Baghdad provincial council, was arrested while on his way to work on Wednesday in connection with funding insurgent groups, officials said.

“An insurgent group confessed that he is funding them and giving them orders,” a Baghdad security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Adhadh is a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni grouping that belongs to the broader Iraqiya coalition to which Hashemi belongs. Hashemi is a former leader of the IIP but has since split from the party.

The IIP confirmed the arrest, but condemned it as “an unprecedented escalation” and called for Adhadh to be freed.

Iraqiya has largely boycotted parliament and cabinet in response to what it claims are Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s centralisation of power, and has called on the premier to respect a year-old power-sharing deal or quit.

The bloc won the most seats in March 2010 elections, but was outmanoeuvred by Maliki’s alliance, which eventually formed the government after a prolonged impasse was finally broken in November of that year.

The row with Maliki erupted last month when authorities charged Hashemi and Maliki, a Shiite, said his Sunni deputy Saleh al-Mutlak should be fired after the latter said the premier was “worse than Saddam Hussein”.

Hashemi has been holed up in the autonomous Kurdish region for the duration of the crisis, and Kurdish officials have so far declined to hand him over to Baghdad.

On Tuesday, Iraq’s cabinet clamped down on Iraqiya’s boycotting ministers by decreeing they could not run their ministries while staying away from its meetings.

The United Nations and the United States have urged calm but their calls for talks involving all of Iraq’s political leaders have so far gone unheeded. AGENCIES

Iraqi forces end gunmen’s siege, 45 killed in attack

BAGHDAD: The death toll from an attack on the Iraqi provincial council headquarters in Tikrit rose to 45 on Tuesday and Iraqi security forces ended a siege by gunmen in the building, a health official said.

Jasim al-Dulaimi, head of the health operations centre in Salahuddin province, said three provincial council members and seven insurgents were among the dead.

Bush shoe-thrower arrested in Baghdad

BAGHDAD: The Iraqi journalist who shot to fame for throwing a shoe at ex-US president trendpk.comrge W. Bush was detained on Thursday while attempting to hold a news conference in Baghdad.

Muntazer al-Zaidi had been due to hold a press conference in front of the Iraqi capital”s Abu Hanifa mosque in district of Adhamiyah when an Iraqi army unit took him away.

“I have orders for you to come with me,” an army colonel told Zaidi, who initially refused, demanding to see a written arrest warrant,.

He was eventually led into an army pick-up truck along with his brother Durgan.

Durgan al-Zaidi said before the news conference that his brother intended to add his voice to calls for a major protest in Baghdad for Friday.

The journalist shot to international notoriety for hurling both his shoes at Bush during a December 2008 press conference in Baghdad, and was eventually sentenced to three years in prison for assaulting a head of state. That was reduced to one year on appeal, and his sentence was cut further for good behavior. Zaidi alleged he suffered electric shocks and simulated drowning while in custody.

Bush shoe-thrower arrested at Baghdad

BAGHDAD: The Iraqi journalist who shot to fame for throwing a shoe at ex-US president trendpk.comrge W. Bush was detained on Thursday while attempting to hold a news conference in Baghdad.

Muntazer al-Zaidi had been due to hold a press conference in front of the Iraqi capital’s Abu Hanifa mosque in the mostly-Sunni district of Adhamiyah when an Iraqi army unit took him away.

“I have orders for you to come with me,” an army colonel told Zaidi, who initially refused, demanding to see a written arrest warrant.

He was eventually led into an army pick-up truck along with his brother Durgan.

Durgan al-Zaidi said before the news conference that his brother intended to add his voice to calls for a major protest in Baghdad for Friday.

The journalist shot to international notoriety for hurling both his shoes at Bush during a December 2008 press conference in Baghdad, and was eventually sentenced to three years in prison for assaulting a head of state.

That was reduced to one year on appeal, and his sentence was cut further for good behaviour. Zaidi alleged he suffered electric shocks and simulated drowning while in custody.

Bomber kills at least 9, wounds 19 in Iraq-source

SAMARRA: A suicide bomber targeting Shi’ite pilgrims killed at least 9 people and wounded 19 near the Iraqi city of Samarra on Saturday, a police source said.

“So far we have received nine dead bodies, five of them are unrecognisable, and 19 wounded. Women and children are amongst them,” the police source at Samarra hospital said.

Samarra is 100 km (62 miles) north of Baghdad. AGENCIES

Death toll in Iraq suicide bombings rises to 17

BAGHDAD: Two suicide car bombers targeting a government compound in the Iraqi town of Ramadi killed at least 17 people and wounded 47 on Monday, a police official said.

“The death toll has risen to 17, most of them police officers, and 47 people have been wounded,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. He said most of the wounded were in serious condition.

He said rescue operations were continuing.

Ramadi is 100 km (60 miles) west of Baghdad. AGENCIES

Saudi King Called Zardari Greatest Obstacle to Pak Progress

Wikileaks: Saudi King Abdullah called President Asif Ali Zardari the greatest obstacle to Pakistan’s progress, according to an online report of New York Times that quoted Wikileaks as saying.

The report further quoted King Abdullah as saying: “When the head is rotten, it affects the whole body.”

The cables released by Wikileaks, the whistle-blower, disclose that aging monarch of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, as speaking scathingly about the leaders of Iraq and Pakistan.

Speaking to another Iraqi official about Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, King Abdullah said, “You and Iraq are in my heart, but that man is not.” The king called President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan the greatest obstacle to that country’s progress. “When the head is rotten,” he said, “it affects the whole body.”

AFP quoting US documents leaked by WikiLeaks and published by Britain’s Guardian newspaper, said King Abdullah urged the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear programme.

Leaked memos from US embassies across the Middle East recorded the king’s “frequent exhortations to the US to attack Iran and so put an end to its nuclear weapons program.”

The memo showed that the king told the United States to “cut off the head of the snake,” and said that working with Washington to roll back Iranian influence in Iraq was “a strategic priority for the king and his government.

Baghdad: All attackers killed in church operation

In Baghdad, Iraq on Monday all the gunmen who stormed a church, seizing dozens of Iraqi and threatening to kill them were killed when the Iraqi police raided the church and ended the stand-off.
Minister of Defence Abdul Qader al-Obeidi who supervised the operation with Baghdad security spokesman Major General Qassim al-Moussawi and a number of Iraqi military commanders said that most of the hostages were rescued and all the attackers were killed, but he stopped short of giving numbers. The US military said between seven and 10 hostages and seven members of the Iraqi security forces, as well as seven attackers, were killed in the rescue operation. Most of the people who were attending the mass were rescued and the operation was carried out with high efficiency. Witnesses reported seeing many bodies inside the church after the gunmen wearing suicide vests threw grenades or blew themselves up as Iraqi forces stormed the building. The insurgents laid siege to one of Baghdad’s biggest churches as more than 100 parishioners attended Sunday mass in a central district near the heavily fortified Green Zone, home to embassies and the Iraqi government. US military officials watched the rescue operation from cameras in hovering helicopters. Violence has fallen sharply in Iraq since the height of sectarian bloodshed in 2006-07 but attacks by Sunni insurgents linked to al Qaeda and Shi’ite militia continue daily. Some police sources said they believed the initial target was the nearby Iraqi stock exchange, a bourse that lists a couple dozen local companies.

Shoes thrown at former Australian PM

LONDON: A critic of the Iraq war has thrown two shoes at former Prime Minister John Howard during last night’s live episode of the ABC’s Q&A program.

Neither shoe hit Mr Howard during the program which also saw the former PM blindsided when he was quizzed by David Hicks about why he was left at Guantanamo Bay military prison for five and a half years.

Mr Howard, who was promoting his memoir Lazarus Rising on Q&A, stood by his decision to send troops to Iraq, had no apology for the treatment of Mr Hicks and defended his approach to asylum seekers.

The man criticized Mr Howard about his decision to go to war in Iraq and persistently interrupted the answer before he launched his attack.

“That is for the Iraqi dead,” the man appeared to shout at Mr Howard as he threw the shoes.

A female audience member then shouted: “You’ve got blood on your

Bombs targeting Iraqi police kill 3 in Baghdad

BAGHDAD: A car bomb and a roadside bomb exploded near a bus terminal in the Iraqi capital on Wednesday, killing three people and wounding a score of others, police and Interior Ministry sources said.

The car bomb exploded near a garage at the terminal in the Bayaa district of southwestern Baghdad, followed by the detonation of a roadside bomb after people gathered at the scene, the sources said.

The bombs appeared to target a police patrol, the sources said, and Iraqi police and soldiers were among the dead and wounded.

The Interior Ministry source put the toll at three killed and 20 wounded. The police source said the blasts killed three and wounded 23. AGENCIES

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