MP accused in Iraqi parliament bombing

A Sunni Muslim MP in Iraq was accused yesterday of involvement in an April 2007 suicide bombing in the parliament canteen that killed eight people including a lawmaker.
General Qassem Atta, spokesman for Baghdad's military security command, made the charge against Mohammed al-Daini, a member of the National Dialogue Front, at a press conference.
Reporters were shown video confessions -- also broadcast on Iraqi television -- by a nephew and a security guard of the accused MP, who said they had carried out several attacks for Daini.
"The suicide bomber entered with an authorisation paper from Mohammed al-Daini and blew himself up at the parliament," nephew Riad Ibrahim al-Daini said on the video, adding that he had taken the assailant to the scene.
Atta said at the press conference in the heavily fortified Green Zone in downtown Baghdad where the Iraqi government is based and parliament is also located that the MP's immunity has not yet been lifted.
But measures have been taken "to prevent him from travelling abroad," he said.
On April 12, 2007, a suicide bomber wearing an explosives belt walked into the parliament canteen at lunchtime carrying a briefcase and blew himself up. In addition to the eight dead, more than 20 people were wounded.
The bombing, which left pools of blood and body parts scattered across the cafeteria, defied a massive US-Iraqi security crackdown launched earlier that same year.
Access to the Green Zone is strictly restricted and granted only after checks and searches at a string of checkpoints.