Iraqi court releases Hezbollah commander

PanARMENIAN.Net - An Iraqi court on Monday, May 7 ruled that a Hezbollah commander accused of plotting the killing of five U.S. soldiers in January 2007 should be released from custody over a lack of evidence, his lawyer said, according to AFP.

Ali Musa Daqduq, an alleged fighter in Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, was handed over to Iraqi authorities in December as U.S. forces completed their withdrawal from the country nearly nine years after the invasion of Iraq.

The U.S. embassy in Baghdad did not immediately comment on the ruling.

Daqduq was captured by U.S.-led forces and held by American troops until he was handed over to Iraqi officials in December, though the latter period of his detention in U.S. custody was under Iraqi government authority as part of an agreement between Baghdad and Washington.

Some members of the U.S. Republican Party had called for leaving U.S. forces to simply bring Daqduq, a Lebanese national, with them as they left Iraq.

But officials said that would be illegal, under security agreements between the two governments, and would have fractured the new and "enduring" relationship with Iraq that President Barack Obama has sought to build.

At the time of Daqduq's capture, the United States accused Iranian special forces of using the Shiite militant group Hezbollah to train Iraqi extremists and of planning the 2007 attack.

The U.S. military said the Quds Force, a unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and Hezbollah were jointly operating camps near Tehran in which they trained Iraqi fighters before sending them back to carry out attacks in Iraq.

It said Daqduq, captured in Iraq's southern city of Basra in March 2007, had confessed to training Iraqi extremists in Iran. Iran dismissed the U.S. accusations as "ridiculous."