Fugitive Iraqi Vice President Tariq Hashemi has left Turkey for Qatar for talks, Today`s Zaman reported
Iraq's Sunni vice president Hashemi, who was given three death sentences by an Iraqi court after finding him guilty of ordering his bodyguards to attack Shiite pilgrims and took refuge in Turkey, has fueled tensions between Turkey and Iraq.
All verdicts have been delivered in absentia, since Hashemi is in exile in Turkey after fleeing in December 2011 when the Shiite-led government leveled accusations against him.
Hashemi is a longtime opponent of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite Muslim. The government has accused the vice president of playing a role in 150 bombings, assassinations and other attacks from 2005 to 2011. That was a period when Iraq was mired in retaliatory sectarian violence that followed the 2003 US-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein's Sunni regime.
He has dismissed the charges as a political vendetta pursued by his long-time rival, Maliki.