BAGHDAD (AP) — A bodyguard for Iraq's fugitive vice president testified Tuesday that he was paid $3,000 to assassinate a government security official in one of hundreds of death squad killings that authorities link to one of the nation's highest-ranking Sunni leaders.

 

The testimony came on the first day of the Iraqi government's terror trial against Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, who was not in court. He denies the charges — that for years he ordered killings of Shia pilgrims and government officials — and says they are politically motivated.

 

Bodyguard Ahmed al-Jubouri testified that he gunned down the security official, identified as Ibrahim Saleh Mahdi, in November 2011 on al-Hashemi's orders. Al-Jubouri said Mahdi's wife also was killed in the drive-by shooting on a Baghdad highway.

 

"The next day, al-Hashemi received me (in his office) and rewarded the team with a sum of $3,000," al-Jubouri told a three-judge panel at Baghdad's criminal court. "At the end of the meeting, the vice president said to me, 'God bless you.'"

 

Al-Jubouri said the death was ordered because Mahdi had become "a source of annoyance" to al-Hashemi.

 

Al-Hashemi currently is in Turkey, where he has said he is receiving medical treatment. His spokesman, Fahad al-Turki, said al-Hashemi could not immediately be reached for comment.

 

Some see the trial as another political power battle in Iraq.

 

"As far as I'm concerned, the issue of al-Hashemi is more political than a legal one," said Sunni lawmaker Hamid al-Mutlaq of the Iraqiya political bloc, which opposes al-Maliki.

 

Evidence against al-Hashemi so far includes purported confessions by several men said to be his bodyguards, who all claimed to receive money for each attack against officials working in Iraq's health and foreign ministries as well as Baghdad police officers.

 

Al-Hashemi has hotly denied the confessions, saying his bodyguards were tortured into making the statements. He gave a national speech in March accusing the government of torturing two of his bodyguards to death — allegations that the Iraqi judiciary said it dismissed after an investigation.

 

The vice president believes he will not get a fair trial in Baghdad's criminal court, and has asked that the case be heard by a special tribunal appointed by parliament. On Tuesday, a judicial panel rejected arguments by al-Hashemi's lawyers that the case should be further delayed while Iraq's Supreme Court weighs whether to move to the tribunal.

 

The trial is focusing on the killings of two security officials and a lawyer, incidents that happened in 2010 and 2011. If convicted of the terror charges, al-Hashemi could face the death penalty.