A judge and a lawyer with the special tribunal that will try Saddam Hussein and former members of his government were shot and killed Tuesday by gunmen outside their home here, Iraqi officials said.

A judge and a lawyer with the special tribunal that will try Saddam Hussein and former members of his government were shot and killed Tuesday by gunmen outside their home here, Iraqi officials said.

It was the first time a member of the tribunal is known to have been assassinated, though a number of criminal and civil judges have been killed here in recent months.

Also on Tuesday, a senior Iraqi official said a half brother of Saddam Hussein who was arrested recently had been captured by Iraqi and allied forces, not by Syria, as Iraqi officials had said over the weekend.

The judge, Parwiz Muhammad Mahmoud al-Merani, 59, was killed a day after the Iraqi special tribunal announced the first charges in the approaching trials of former senior officials in Mr. Hussein’s government. His son, Aryan Mahmoud al-Merani, 26, who also worked at the tribunal as a lawyer, was killed with him, according to officials at Iraq’s Interior Ministry.

Three men drove up and fired automatic weapons at the two men around 9 a.m. as they stood outside their family home in Adhamiya, a largely Sunni Arab neighborhood that has been a center of insurgent activity. Witnesses saw the attackers speeding away in a green Opel sedan without license plates, the officials said.

The 400 or so tribunal members, including about 100 judges and lawyers, have been provided with security guards, and their names have largely been kept secret to forestall assassination attempts. On Monday, as the first charges were announced, a Western legal expert involved in the trial process said that those working on the tribunal were exposed to dangers and that there had been “some incidents,” but he declined to provide details.

On Tuesday evening, seven Iraqi police officers were killed in four separate incidents in and around Baghdad, police and hospital officials said. The attacks began when a police lieutenant was killed by gunmen outside his home in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Doura, Interior Ministry officials said.


One of First Convictions in Country for Exporting National Security …

One of First Convictions in Country for Exporting National Security Items to Iran

SAN JOSE – LAWFUEL – Law News Network – United States Attorney Kevin V. Ryan announced that Super Micro Computer Inc. pleaded guilty yesterday to a felony charge of unlawfully exporting computer components to Iran in 2001 and 2002. Export of the computer components was banned at the time for reasons of national security under export commodity control number 4A003.b. This guilty plea is the result of an investigation by agents of the Bureau of Industry and Security, Office of Export Enforcement, of the U.S. Department of Commerce, which regulates exports, and Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigation.

Super Micro, headquartered in San Jose, Calif., was charged in an information filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office on September 1, 2006. The company was charged with one count of knowingly exporting items subject to export regulations without obtaining a license, in violation of Title 50, United States Code, section 1705(b). Under the terms of the plea agreement, the company agreed to plead guilty and pay a $150,000 fine. Pursuant to the agreement, Judge Ronald M. Whyte imposed the sentence on the same day the company pleaded guilty. According to the plea agreement, as a result of the investigation the company implemented a new export control program in February 2004. Since the initiation of that program, the government has been monitoring Super Micro’s exports and has found no evidence of further export violations. Remedial actions taken by the company were taken into account for sentencing purposes.

In pleading guilty, the company admitted that between December 28, 2001, and January 29, 2002, the company sold 300 of the company’s P4SBA+ Motherboards to a company named Super Net in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, knowing that the items were to be transhipped to Iran. Super Net paid $27,600 for the items. At the time of the export the items were controlled for reasons of national security, and exporting them to Iran without a license was illegal. The motherboards at issue are no longer controlled for export.

According to Department of Commerce records, this case is one of the first criminal convictions in the nation for exporting items controlled for national security reasons to Iran.

Gary G. Fry is the Assistant U.S. Attorney who prosecuted the case with the assistance of Legal Technician Tracey Andersen.

Further Information:

Case #: CR 06-00597 RMW

A copy of this press release may be found on the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s website at www.usdoj.gov/usao/can.

Electronic court filings and further procedural and docket information are available at https://ecf.cand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl.

Judges’ calendars with schedules for upcoming court hearings can be viewed on the court’s website at www.cand.uscourts.gov.

All press inquiries to the U.S. Attorney’s Office should be directed to Luke Macaulay at (415) 436-6757 or by email at Luke.Macaulay@usdoj.gov.

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