BAGHDAD - An alleged al Qaeda militant was executed for his role in one of the first and bloodiest bombings in Iraq, a 2003 blast that killed Shiite leader Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim and 84 other people, a Justice Ministry official said Friday.
Oras Mohammed Abdul-Aziz was executed by hanging Tuesday in Baghdad after being sentenced to death in October, Ministry Undersecretary Busho Ibrahim told The Associated Press.
The execution announcement was the first word that a suspect had been tried in the al-Hakim killing.
Al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack -- a huge car bomb in August 2003 that went off outside the Shrine of Ali in Najaf, one of Shiite Islam's holist sites, and killed al-Hakim.
Al-Hakim was the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and was poised to become a major figure in Iraqi politics following the fall of Saddam Hussein only months before his assassination. His brother Abdulaziz al-Hakim now heads the group, the largest Shiite party in parliament.
Ibrahim said Abdul-Aziz, from the northern city of Mosul, was affiliated with al Qaeda in Iraq and confessed to other attacks, including the 2004 killing of Abdel-Zahraa Othman, the president of the Governing Council, the U.S.-appointed body that ran Iraq following Saddam's fall.
The al-Hakim slaying was one of the first major bombings in Iraq and foreshadowed the four-year insurgency that was to follow. It came 10 days after a bombing against the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad killed 23 people including the top U.N. envoy to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, an attack also claimed by al Qaeda in Iraq.
