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ISW in Brief: Interpol and Maliki Escalate Iraq's Political Crisis
At the request of the Iraqi authorities, Interpol on Tuesday issued a Red Notice for Iraqi Vice President Tariq Al-Hashemi “on suspicion of guiding and financing terrorist attacks” in Iraq. Although not an international arrest warrant for Hashemi, the Red Notice represents an international alert to all of Interpol’s 190 member countries to seek their help in locating and arresting him. Hashemi is currently in Turkey, having refused to return to Baghdad to attend a trial originally scheduled for May 3 but postponed after Hashemi’s lawyers filed motions for the vice president to be tried by a special tribunal for high-ranking officials allowed for under the Iraqi Constitution. The notice is the latest episode in a political crisis that began with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issuing an arrest warrant for Hashemi the day after U.S. forces left Iraq in December 2011. Observers have accused Maliki of increasing authoritarian rule in Iraq, escalating tensions with the Kurdish Regional Government, and engaging in a diplomatic row with Turkey, which has already refused to extradite Hashemi to Baghdad.
The Red Notice against Hashemi is based on a national warrant Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council issued on December 19, 2011. That warrant came after Iraq’s federal police intelligence office filed charges against Hashemi under Article IV of the country’s anti-terrorism law. On the day the warrant was issued, state-run Al-Iraqiyah television aired confessions by two of Hashemi’s bodyguards in which the men claimed Hashemi’s office paid them to carry out attacks on officials and police officers. Hashemi was subsequently allowed to travel to the Kurdistan region, and he later met with officials in Qatar and Saudi Arabia before arriving in Turkey in early April.
Hashemi has maintained that the charges are part of Maliki’s “political attack” against him. On May 3, he told Al-Jazeera that he considered the case “politicized from the beginning … because the file was handled by [Maliki], not the head of the Judiciary Council.” Hashemi has insisted not only that his case should be tried by the Constitutional Court rather than the criminal court but that he has the right to face such a court in Arbil or Kirkuk rather than Baghdad. Hashemi has also alleged that the confessions exacted from his bodyguards were the result of torture. On March 21, he released a statement claiming that he had photographic evidence that Amir Sarbut Zaidan al-Batawi, one of the arrested guards, was tortured to death in Baghdad. Hashemi subsequently accused Baghdad Operations Command spokesman Qassim Atta and Director of Military Intelligence Hatem al-Maqsosi, as well as judge Saad al-Lami and other officials, of supervising “a collective ceremony of torture” that included rape.
Like Qatar, which declined to extradite Hashemi on the grounds that it would contravene diplomatic protocol, Turkey has already announced that it will not return Hashemi to Iraq. On Wednesday, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag implied that Turkish reticence was due not only to support for Hashemi, “whom we have supported since the very beginning,” but also to a lack of Iraqi cooperation over handing over PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) members to Turkey. An extradition treaty has been in place between Turkey and Iraq since 1995, but it has never been activated because Baghdad refuses to arrest PKK members believed to be in Iraqi territory. Moreover, Turkey is a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits members from extraditing foreign nationals to countries where they likely face death or ill treatment. Article 4 of Iraq’s Anti-Terrorism Law states that those who incite, plan, finance, or assist terrorists “shall face the same penalty as the main perpetrator” – a death sentence. Turkey’s only legal obligation under the Red Notice is to notify Interpol that Hashemi is in the country, and in the meantime, according to a senior Turkish diplomat, Turkey will continue to host Hashemi as the vice president of Iraq.
The Red Notice appeared as Maliki intensified his antagonism of the opposition, particularly the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG). On Tuesday, Maliki arrived in the disputed city of Kirkuk to hold a meeting of the Council of Ministers, where he insisted that the area was “a microcosm of Iraq. In the truest meaning of the word, its identity is Iraqi…This province will stay in this political, social, and economic situation.” While Maliki had previously announced plans to hold a series of such meetings in Iraq’s provinces, this is only the second time he has done so, and the timing of the meeting signals a desire to project federal government authority into the disputed territories amid Maliki’s on-going feud with the Kurds and their allies. Despite recent Kurdish complaints about the prospect of Maliki using American-sold F16s against the autonomous region and a subsequent spat over the legality of Kurdish possession of heavy weapons captured from the Saddam-era armed forces, Maliki reportedly brought an artillery battalion with him to Kirkuk, ostensibly a security measure, but one that seems calculated to exacerbate Kurdish fears.
Maliki’s escalation towards the Kurds comes after KRG President Massoud Barzani hosted Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Iraqiyya leader Ayad Allawi, Shi’a cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and Parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi in Arbil, and the group issued a 15-day ultimatum for Maliki to deliver on a list of nine demands or face the threat of a no-confidence vote in Parliament. It is still unclear, however, that the Sadrists would participate in such an attempt to unseat Maliki. In the meantime, Iraq remains consumed by the political crisis touched off by Maliki’s initial accusations against Hashemi.
Stephen Wicken is a Research Assistant at ISW.