Son of top Iraqi judge murdered in Baghdad
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Gunmen killed the son of Iraq's top judge along with two of his bodyguards and dumped their bodies in Baghdad, officials said Saturday. Other attacks outside the capital killed five Iraqis and a U.S. soldier, police said.
The violence came as Prime Minister-designate Nouri al-Maliki struggled to put together his Cabinet, the final step in establishing a new government of national unity. The pace has been slow because of rivalries among Iraq's political parties, most of which represent specific religious or ethnic groups.
Police found the bodies of Ahmed Midhat al-Mahmoud, 22, a lawyer, and two of his bodyguards Saturday in the mostly Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah, said Hasan Sabri, the head of the local council and Iraq's deputy justice minister, Busho Ibrahim Ali.
The killings came five months after the judge, Midhat al-Mahmoud, survived a Dec. 4 suicide bomb attack against his home. Two people were injured in the attack.
The judge, a Shiite, heads the Supreme Judicial Council, a judicial supervisory body that swears in all judges and parliament, among other responsibilities.
The killings were the latest carried out against government officials or their families. It could also be part of a series of killings by death squads and militias, who have kidnapped and killed hundreds of Sunnis and Shiites, often motivated by sectarian hatred.
The bodies of three other Iraqis who had been kidnapped and tortured were found in the capital Saturday, police said.
A U.S. Army soldier died in a roadside bombing south of Baghdad at 4 a.m., officials said.
In Mosul, a mostly Sunni Arab city 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, suspected insurgents riding in what looked like a taxi shot and killed Idrees Shihatha, a local tribal sheik, as he drove his car, said police Brig. Abdul-Hamid al-Jibouri. In another part of Mosul, a drive-by shooting killed four Iraqis and wounded one, al-Jibouri said.
