BAGHDAD, Sept 29: Gunmen murdered the brother-in-law of the judge in Saddam Hussein’s genocide trial, officials said on Friday, as Al Qaeda threatened to plunge Iraq into even greater bloodshed.
A spokesman for the Iraqi government said an unidentified gang had opened fire late on Thursday on a car carrying members of the judge’s family in a flashpoint district of western Baghdad.
It was not immediately clear whether the relatives fell victim to a targeted assassination designed to intimidate Judge Mohammed al-Oreibi al-Khalifa or simply to a bitter civil conflict that claims around 100 lives per day.
“They killed the man and injured his son, who is now in a hospital,” said Brigadier General Abdel Karim Khalaf, the spokesman of the interior ministry.
Earlier, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh had said that the son had been killed.
Mr Dabbagh maintained that he didn’t expect the attack to affect the trial.
“The court is totally independent but we don’t have any information that the judge will drop out. He’s continuing as far as I know. I talked with him and he is continuing with the job,” he said.
Kadhim Abdallah Hussein and his son, who are Shia, had gone back to their house to collect possessions they had left behind when they had been forced to move from the mostly Sunni neighbourhood.
Judge Khalifa is presiding in the trial of Saddam Hussein on charges of genocide during the 1988 Anfal campaign against the country’s Kurdish minority.
Throughout the legal proceedings against the former strongman, lawyers acting for both the defence and prosecution have been intimidated, and some members of Saddam’s legal team have been murdered.
Abdel Mahdi al-Karbalaie, a representative of Iraq’s senior Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, accused Sunni extremists and Saddam’s supporters of fuelling the violence and driving Shias from their homes.
Violence raged on around Iraq on Friday, with bombings and shootings accounting for several lives, while government security forces struck back in the lawless province of Diyala, a hunting ground for Al Qaeda.
Brigadier General Shakir Abdul-Hussein al-Kaabi, commander of the Fifth Division of the Iraqi Army, said that his men supported by US forces have arrested 60 suspects in the provincial capital Baquba.
The morgue in Kut, south of Baghdad, reported receiving two corpses found by police, one riddled with bullets, the other lacking a head.—AFP