There is Sunni Arab-sponsored and Sunni Arab-tolerated terrorism in Iraq. Vice President Hashemi's guilt is being confused by making his prosecution a matter of determining Sunni-Shia relationships in Iraq. But the question is whether he is guilty of either sponsoring terrorism or tolerating it among his employees. This Iraqi judicial panel says he did this:
An Iraqi judicial panel said Thursday that Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi and his employees ran death squads that for years carried out deadly attacks on security officials and Shiite pilgrims.
The nine-judge committee's findings, which are not legally binding, offered the first independent assessment of a case that has touched off a political crisis along sectarian lines and nearly brought the Iraqi government's work to a halt. Al-Hashemi has denied the allegations, and accuses Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of coordinating a smear campaign as part of a power grab.
If convicting a Sunni Arab leader of committing terrorism harms sectarian relations, the sectarian relations aren't worth defending. We need to help Iraqis determine the truth behind the allegations regardless of where the truth leads.
Sectarian relations will suffer either if a guilty man goes unpunished as much as they would if an innocent man is punished. And we may need to be creative to make sure that a judgment of guilt is accepted by the Sunni Arabs or that a judgment of not-guilt is accepted by the Shias.
