Turkey will not hand in fugitive Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi who was sentenced to death in absentia by an Iraqi court on terror charges, Turkish media reported.



Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Teyyip Edrogan has reportedly defended the Sunni VP and said he has known the Sunni Iraqi leader for the past decade “very well” to believe he was involved in terrorist attacks.

“Our friendship with Hashemi is not new. We have known Hashemi's position and actions very well for the past 10 years… Therefore, it is out of the question that he has done things that would lead to capital punishment. Hashemi is a person who has himself lost several members of his family. It is out of the question that he has been involved in such activities,” Today’s Zaman quoted Erdogan as saying.

“In the event that we receive a request [from Iraq for his extradition] we will host him in our country as long as he wishes to stay here. We will not hand him over [to Iraq],”

The Iraqi court issued a death sentence for Hashemi on Sunday on charges of running death squads and found him guilty of 25 killings in 45 attacks that were carried out by his guards.

Hashemi’s guards said in videoed confessions that Hashemi had ordered the killings.

Hashemi has rejected the accusations and said the he would not attend a trial being held in Baghdad because the Iraqi courts have been politicized. He said, however, that he would attend trial if it was held in a court in Kurdistan Region.

Hashemi has fled to Turkey in April after he fled to the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region upon the issuance of an arrest warrant for him by the judicial council in Baghdad in December last year.













AKnews