4 May 2012 Last updated at 14:09 gmt

Trial of fugitive Iraqi Vice-President Hashemi delayed

The trial in absentia of the Iraqi Vice-President, Tariq al-Hashemi, on charges of running death squads has been postponed until next week.

His lawyers asked for the delay, and want parliament to set up a special court to hear the case.

Mr Hashemi is accused of running a Sunni death squad that targeted Shia officials in post-invasion Iraq.

Mr Hashemi, the most senior Sunni Arab political figure in majority Shia Iraq, denies all the charges.

He fled to Kurdish-run northern Iraq when the allegations surfaced in 2011.

Mr Hashemi is accused of involvement in the killings of a top official in the national security ministry; another official in the interior ministry and a lawyer, a judicial spokesman said.

Prosecutors say Mr Hashemi and his bodyguards ran a death squad that carried out a campaign of political assassinations and bombings during the height of Iraq's insurgency.

On Monday, Mr Hashemi was also charged with the murder of six judges in a separate case.

In total, the authorities say he is linked to a total of 150 killings.

The court spokesman told the AFP news agency that further charges against Mr Hashemi were possible, but refused to say how many charges he faced.

Mr Hashemi says the charges are politically motivated.

He alleges that three of his bodyguards died while investigators tortured them in an attempt to extract false confessions.

Sectarian rift

Correspondents say the trial risks widening Iraq's Shia-Sunni sectarian divide.

The tensions between the two communities erupted into a spiral of violence in the years after the US-led invasion of 2003. Thousands died at the height of the conflict in 2006 and 2007.

Iraq is currently run by an uneasy unity coalition of Shia, Sunni and Kurdish groups, but critics accuse the Shia Prime Minister, Nouri Maliki, of seeking to monopolise power.

In an interview with the BBC in April, Mr Hashemi accused Mr Maliki of wanting to "regenerate the sectarian strife" that afflicted Iraq five years ago.

In December 2011, Mr Hashemi fled Baghdad when the judicial authorities issued an arrest warrant against him over the death squad allegations.

He sought refuge in autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, which refused to hand him over to the authorities in Baghdad.

Last month, Mr Hashemi angered the Iraqi government by leaving for a regional tour to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. He is currently still in Turkey.

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4 May 2012 Last updated at 12:04 GMT

Pakistan cricketer Mohammad Asif freed after fixing scam sentence

Pakistan cricketer Mohammad Asif, one of three jailed for a fixing scam, has been released after serving half of a 12-month sentence, his lawyer says.

Asif, 29, the former world number two Test bowler, was freed from Canterbury Prison in Kent on Thursday morning.

In November, Asif and team-mates Salman Butt and Mohammad Amir were jailed for a plot to bowl deliberate no balls in a Test match against England in 2010.

All three players were also given five-year playing bans.

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said it did not comment on individuals.

"Foreign national offenders released from prison on licence will be supervised by probation for as long as they remain in this country," he said.

Undercover reporter

The fixing scandal came to light when an undercover News of the World reporter approached sports agent Mazhar Majeed, who was also jailed for his role, pretending to be a wealthy Indian businessman seeking players for a tournament.

Majeed promised him that Asif and Amir would deliver three no-balls at specific points during the Test between Pakistan and England at Lord's on 26-29 August 2010, and claimed to have been fixing games for over two years, with seven Pakistan players working for him.

At Southwark Crown Court in November, ex-Test captain Salman Butt, 27, was jailed for two-and-a-half years for his role as the "orchestrator" of the plot.

Explaining why he had bowled a no-ball when Majeed said he would, Asif alleged that Butt had told him to "run faster" moments before his delivery.

The trial judge, Mr Justice Cooke, said there was no evidence that Asif had taken part in fixing before the Lord's match but added: "It is hard to see how this could be an isolated occurrence for you."

Asif took his 100th Test wicket during Pakistan's 2010 series in England.

He had run into controversy before. He twice tested positive for the performance-enhancing drug nandrolone and was held in Dubai for 19 days in 2008 after opium was found in his wallet.

Mohammad Amir was released from jail in February.

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