BAGHDAD: An Iraq court has acquitted a police officer previously convicted and sentenced to death for leading a group that gunned down well-known analyst and government adviser Hisham Al-Hashemi more than three years ago in Baghdad, court officials told Reuters on Monday.
Hashemi, who had advised the government on defeating Sunni Muslim Daesh militants and curbing the influence of the pro-Iran Shiite militias, was shot outside his Baghdad family home on July 6 2020 by men on a motorbike.
A Baghdad court issued the ruling following a retrial on Wednesday. The court dropped the charges against Ahmed Hamdawi for lack of evidence and said his previous confessions were unfit for conviction, said a criminal court lawyer who attended the session.
Media were not allowed access to the court session.
“Ahmed Hamdawi has denied all charges and judges found that there is no legal basis to charge him. The judge has decided to release him unless he’s wanted for another case,” said the lawyer, reading from a copy of the verdict.
Hamdawi was blamed for killing Hashemi using a police gun and sentenced to death by a Baghdad court last May.
His lawyers appealed the sentence last year, and an appeal court canceled the death sentence and ordered a retrial, a court official said.
After Hashemi’s murder government officials told Reuters he had been advising on plans to curb the power of pro-Iran groups and bring smaller paramilitaries who oppose Iran under closer state control.
Hashemi’s killing was related directly to his recent work on pro-Iran groups, they said.
Iran-aligned paramilitary officials deny any role in the killing. Some Islamic State supporters cheered his death, but no group has claimed the murder nor been fingered publicly by the government.
Iraqi court acquits police officer convicted for murder of a government adviser
https://arab.news/89g58
Iraqi court acquits police officer convicted for murder of a government adviser
- Hamdawi was blamed for killing Hashemi using a police gun and sentenced to death by a Baghdad court last May
The UN says Al-Hol camp population has dropped sharply as Syria moves to relocate remaining families
The UN says Al-Hol camp population has dropped sharply as Syria moves to relocate remaining families
- Forces of Syria’s central government captured the Al-Hol camp on Jan. 21 during a weekslong offensive against the SDF, which had been running the camp near the border with Iraq for a decade
DAMASCUS: The UN refugee agency said Sunday that a large number of residents of a camp housing family members of suspected Daesh group militants have left and the Syrian government plans to relocate those who remain.
Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, UNHCR’s representative in Syria, said in a statement that the agency “has observed a significant decrease in the number of residents in Al-Hol camp in recent weeks.”
“Syrian authorities have informed UNHCR of their plan to relocate the remaining families to Akhtarin camp in Aleppo Governorate (province) and have requested UNHCR’s support to assist the population in the new camp, which we stand ready to provide,” he said.
He added that UNHCR “will continue to support the return and reintegration of Syrians who have departed Al-Hol, as well as those who remain.”
The statement did not say how residents had left the camp or how many remain. Many families are believed to have escaped either during the chaos when government forces captured the camp from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces last month or afterward.
There was no immediate statement from the Syrian government and a government spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
At its peak after the defeat of IS in Syria in 2019, around 73,000 people were living at Al-Hol. Since then, the number has declined with some countries repatriating their citizens. The camp’s residents are mostly children and women, including many wives or widows of IS members.
The camp’s residents are not technically prisoners and most have not been accused of crimes, but they have been held in de facto detention at the heavily guarded facility.
Forces of Syria’s central government captured the Al-Hol camp on Jan. 21 during a weekslong offensive against the SDF, which had been running the camp near the border with Iraq for a decade. A ceasefire deal has since ended the fighting.
Separately, thousands of accused IS militants who were held in detention centers in northeastern Syria have been transferred to Iraq to stand trial under an agreement with the US
The US military said Friday that it had completed the transfer of more than 5,700 adult male IS suspects from detention facilities in Syria to Iraqi custody.
Iraq’s National Center for International Judicial Cooperation said a total of 5,704 suspects from 61 countries who were affiliated with IS — most of them Syrian and Iraqi — were transferred from prisons in Syria. They are now being interrogated in Iraq.
