Source:
ReutersBAGHDAD, Jan 25 (Reuters) - A court in Baghdad sentenced a former Iraqi lawmaker to death in absentia for a series of sectarian murders, including a 2007 suicide attack in parliament, a government spokesman said on Monday.
Mohammed al-Daini, a Sunni Arab politician, denied the charges that surfaced almost a year ago that he ordered car bombings, mortar attacks and mass murders during the height of the sectarian violence that followed the U.S.-led invasion.
Daini later disappeared and was captured in October trying to use a fake passport at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, according to the government.
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Daini, whose parliamentary immunity was lifted last year, said his guards' purported confessions were extracted by force.
Iraqi court officials were not available to confirm the sentence.
Daini was a member of the National Dialogue Front, whose leader Saleh al-Mutlaq is at the centre of a political storm triggered by a government panel's decision to bar about 500 candidates from Iraq's March elections for alleged ties to Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baath party.
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