The convicted mastermind of the killing of British aid worker Margaret Hassan has escaped from prison in Iraq, having earlier been jailed.
Ali Lutfi Jassar al-Rawi was jailed after being sentenced to life in prison on June 2 last year for planning the kidnapping and for attempting to blackmail her family.
‘This guy, he escaped from prison,’ Iraqi Deputy Justice Minister Busho Ibrahim said.
‘People facilitated his escape, he is gone.’
Lawyers for Rawi have claimed that an alleged confession put before the court of first instance was extracted under torture.
His retrial had originally been scheduled to begin in April, but has repeatedly been delayed.
Margaret Hassan's kidnap and murder, one of the most high-profile killings to follow the US-led invasion of 2003, had sparked international revulsion and widespread sympathy.
The Dublin-born woman, whose body has never been found, had lived in Iraq for 30 years when she was taken hostage in October 2004 and shot a month later.
The 59-year-old was head of operations in Iraq for the humanitarian group Care International for around 12 years before she was pulled from her car by men in police uniform as she was being driven to work.
Felicity Arbuthnot, a human rights campaigner and friend of Margaret Hassan's, said that Iraq's country's justice system had little reliability since the invasion.
