The political crisis in Iraq deepened on Tuesday, as the Sunni vice president angrily rebutted charges that he had ordered his security guards to assassinate government officials, saying that Shiite-backed security forces had induced the guards into false confessions.
In a nationally televised news conference, the vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, blamed the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for using the country’s security forces to persecute political opponents.
«The accusations have not been proven, so the accused is innocent until proven guilty,» al-Hashimi said at the news conference in Irbil, in the Kurdish north of Iraq. «I swear by God I didn’t do this disobedience against Iraqi blood, and I would never do this.»
Standing in front of an Iraqi flag, al-Hashimi questioned why al-Maliki had waited until the day after the U.S. military withdrew its troops from Iraq to publicly lay out the charges.
Al-Hashimi said he would not return to Baghdad, effectively making him an internal exile. The case against him should be transferred to Kurdistan where he could face a fair trial, he said.
The response from al-Hashimi came a day after the Shiite-led government ordered him arrested and played videotaped confessions on national television from three men who said they had worked as his bodyguards and were ordered by him to commit murders. The men claimed to have used roadside bombs and silencer-equipped pistols to kill Iraqi government and security officers.
Source: sfgate.com