Deputy Health Minister Hakim al-Zamili and guard force commander Hamid al-Shimari: arrest, trial and acquittal (from 2007 to 2008)

Hakim al-Zamili, a deputy minister of health from the Sadrist movement, and Brigadier General Hamid al-Shimari, who commanded the ministry's security force, were arrested in separate raids in February 2007; al-Zamili was seized by US and Iraqi troops on 9 February. A US military statement said the deputy minister was believed to have moved millions of dollars from the ministry to the Mahdi Army to support sectarian attacks, and that militiamen used hospitals to identify Sunni patients who were later attacked. Prosecutors charged the two men with offences including murder and kidnapping and with letting death squads use ministry ambulances and hospitals; NPR reported that they were also accused of corruption and of funnelling money to militias. The trial was due to open on 19 February 2008. Some witnesses stayed away and others changed their accounts. On 3 March 2008 a panel of judges acquitted both men of all charges for lack of evidence, and they were released in March 2008. The chief investigative judge of the Central Criminal Court of Iraq later told NPR that the evidence was not conclusive.