Group: Bombing retaliates for sheik's slaying

A key witness for Saddam Hussein's trial has died.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
Sunni Arabs in Iraq protested the slaying of a respected sheik Friday, and a little-known Sunni group said a deadly car bombing was retaliation for the shooting death. Prosecutors said a key witness in Saddam Hussein's trial has died of cancer, but his testimony has been recorded and can still be used.
Meanwhile, a videotape posted on the Internet -- allegedly by Al-Qaida in Iraq -- purportedly showed how the terror group planned and carried out the Oct. 24 triple suicide attack against the Palestine and Sheraton hotels, in which 17 people were killed.
A narrator said the Palestine -- headquarters of The Associated Press, Fox News and others -- was occupied "by foreign journalists and security companies" but indicated the Sheraton was the main target because it housed "assassination teams, intelligence groups" and American soldiers.
The videotape's authenticity could not be verified, but it appeared on an Islamic Web site known for publishing messages from militant groups.
Protesting sheik's death
In northwestern Baghdad, more than 200 members of the Batta tribe gathered at a mosque carrying banners and chanting slogans to demand the resignation of the defense minister in the slaying Wednesday of Khadim Sarhid al-Hemaiyem.
One of the sheik's brothers said gunmen wearing Iraqi army uniforms and vehicles broke into the family home, killing al-Hemaiyem, three of his sons and his son-in-law. A spokesman for the Interior Ministry denied that government forces were involved.
Another one of al-Hemaiyem's sons was killed by men in uniform last month, family members said.
"We want the Arab League and the Sunni scholars to investigate," said Abdullah Jawad Khadim al-Battawi, a relative.
Bombing claim
A statement from the little-known Partisans of the Sunni claimed it carried out the car bombing Thursday in the mostly Shiite city of Hillah in retaliation for the slaying of al-Hemaiyem and other attacks against Sunni Arabs.
Eleven people were killed, and 17 were wounded in the Hillah attack.
"We have warned the [Shiites] to stop assassinations and detentions and torture," the statement posted Friday on an Islamist Web site said. "You should know, your blood is no more dear than ours. You kill our men, we kill yours. You kill our sheiks, we kill yours. You started this war."
An Interior Ministry official said security forces were aware of the Partisans group, which has been active in the area south of Baghdad for months. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to media, said authorities suspect the same group was behind a suicide car bombing Thursday near a hospital in Mahmoudiya that killed 30 people.
Witness dies
Also Friday, a prosecutor in Saddam's trial said a key witness in the case has died of cancer but his testimony already had been taped for presentation in the proceedings, which are set to resume Monday.
Wadah Ismael al-Sheik died Oct. 27, four days after talking to court officials, said Jaafar al-Mousawi, the main prosecutor. Al-Sheik was a senior Iraqi intelligence officer at the time of the Dujail massacre in 1982 that Saddam and seven other co-defendants are charged with.
Sheehan monument
Meanwhile, Cindy Sheehan presided over the unveiling Friday in Crawford, Texas, of a permanent sandstone monument in memory of her son, Casey, a soldier who was killed in Iraq in 2004.
The monument is the central feature of a small garden of cactus and yucca plants anti-war demonstrators have planted in front of the Crawford Peace House, the headquarters of their effort in the town near President Bush's vacation ranch.
Standing arm in arm with her sister, Dede Miller, and Juan Torres and Bill Mitchell, two fathers who lost sons in Afghanistan and Iraq, Sheehan said her protest, begun during Bush's stay here in August, had not ended.
"We're not going away," she told supporters gathered under an overcast sky. "We don't hate anybody. We just want people to be held accountable, and just because someone is president of the United States, it doesn't guarantee them immunity from accountability. And we're still looking for that."
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