BAGHDAD – Iraq’s former electoral chief Faraj Al-Haidari said an appeals court Tuesday reversed a corruption conviction and one-year prison sentence against him and two other senior officials.



“We were informed by the judiciary that the federal appeals court has canceled the verdict, and all the measures that were taken against us,” Haidari said.



“This is a final decision, which was issued by the highest judicial authority in the country.”



Haidari and two other Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) commissioners, Karim Al-Tamimi and Osama Al-Ani, were sentenced on Aug. 28, effectively barring them from public office for life as anyone convicted of a criminal offense cannot hold a civil service position in Iraq.



Verdicts against all three were reversed Tuesday.



They were arrested in April on charges of corruption, having allegedly paid a bonus of 150,000 dinars ($130) to an employee of Iraq’s state property commission in order to secure better-located government-allotted plots of land.



There is bad blood between Haidari and Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki’s State of Law list over the aftermath of 2010 parliamentary elections, in which the premier’s list came in second to the Iraqiya list of Iyad Allawi. – AFP