An Iraqi court on Monday
ruled that a Hezbollah commander accused of plotting the killing of five US
soldiers in January 2007 should be released from custody over a lack of
evidence, his lawyer said.
Ali Musa Daqduq, an alleged
fighter in Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, was handed over to Iraqi authorities
in December as US forces completed their withdrawal from the country nearly
nine years after the invasion of Iraq.
"The Central Criminal
Court of Iraq issued a ruling to release Ali Daqduq today, Monday, because of a
lack of evidence," his lawyer Abdulmahdi al-Mutairi told AFP.
"No document was
provided that indicates the guilt of Daqduq, and all of what was shown to the
court were copies and not originals. There was no testimony and the charges had
no foundation."
It was unclear when
precisely Daqduq would be freed.
The US embassy in Baghdad
did not immediately comment on the ruling.
Daqduq was captured by
US-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 US custody
was under Iraqi government authority as part of an agreement between Baghdad
and Washington.
Some members of the US
Republican Party had called for leaving US 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 Shia
militant group Hezbollah to train Iraqi extremists and of planning the 2007
attack.
The US 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 US
accusations as "ridiculous."
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