Gunmen shot dead a senior Baghdad judge and his young son on Tuesday and then danced in the street, shouting "This is what will happen to the traitor Shiites", one
of the dead man's colleagues told AFP.
The assailants, driving an Opel car, cut off Judge Qaiss Hashem al-Shamari, 32, the secretary of Iraq's council of judges, who was driving with his child, and shot them dead in eastern Baghdad, Shamari's fellow judge told AFP on condition of anonymity.
"When they shot them, they jumped out of the car and started shouting 'this is what will happen to the traitor Shia'," Shamari's colleague said.
Shamari served as the chief administrator on the council of judges, the legal body that supervises all of Iraq's courts.
The Governor of Baghdad and the capital's deputy police chief were gunned down earlier this month as insurgents escalated their efforts to sabotage next Sunday's national election.
In an audiotape message posted on an Islamist website last Sunday, militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- the most wanted man in Iraq with a 25 million dollar price on his head -- declared all-out war on the elections he considers un-Islamic and also singled out the country's Shiite majority.
Zarqawi said the January 30 polls were a "wicked trap aimed at putting the Rafidha (a derogatory term for Shiite Muslims) in the seat of power in Iraq."
It was the second inflammatory message from Osama bin Laden's anointed "emir" in Iraq since Thursday as he sought to maximize violence among the country's fractious mix of Shiites and Sunnis ahead of the vote.