MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - Gunmen shot dead a prominent Iraqi judge outside his home in the northern city of Mosul on Tuesday, a day after another judge was kidnapped and killed in the south of the country, police said.

A witness said a car with tinted windows suddenly pulled up outside the home of Ismail Youssef, a judge in Mosul's appeals court, at about 7:45 a.m. (12:45 a.m. EST) and men got out and shot him several times in the chest and side, police said.

The 60-year-old judge's family said they did not know why he had been attacked. Some judges with links to ousted president Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s Baath party were fired after the U.S.-led war, but Youssef remained on the judge's bench.

"He was a good and honest man. He wasn't a member of any political party," his brother-in-law Tarik Moussa said...