The terror trial against Iraq's fugitive Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi and his captured guards started in Baghdad on Tuesday, a judicial source said.

"The trial of Hashimi and a number of his guards has started today in a Baghdad criminal court," the spokesman of the Supreme Judicial Council Abdul-Sattar al-Birqdar told reporters.

Hashimi is being prosecuted in absentia, and the court opened the case in the morning and started hearing to plaintiffs and witnesses over crimes of assassinating a director general in the national security ministry, an officer in the interior ministry and a lawyer, Birqdar said.

The trial of Hashimi and his guards has been delayed twice during the past two weeks after Hashimi's attorney team submitted a request to the appeals court, contesting that his trial must not be in the criminal court and that the cases must be heard by the Federal Court. But their request was rejected.

Hashimi is facing more than 150 charges filed against him, while 73 of his guards are facing more than 300 charges.

"There are many crimes that Hashimi and his bodyguards are accused of and we have confessions from them, including the assassination of six judges," Birqdar earlier said.

On Dec. 19, 2011, an arrest warrant was issued against Hashimi on charges of running death squads.

The Interpol issued Tuesday an international memorandum called "red notice" against Hashimi over alleged terrorist acts.

"At the request of Iraqi authorities, Interpol has published a Red Notice for Iraq's Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, on suspicion of guiding and financing terrorist attacks in the country," the international police agency said in a statement on its website, stressing that the red notice is not an international arrest warrant.

Hashimi left Iraq's northern Kurdish region last month on a tour to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

The day after he left Iraq, Baghdad demanded extradition for Hashimi, but Qatar refused the request, saying that there is no court verdict against Hashimi and that he still holds official title and enjoys immunity.

Soon after the U.S. troops fully withdrew from Iraq late last year, Iraq plunged into serious political row as Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki sought to arrest his political rival Hashimi, a leading member of the Sunni-backed political bloc of Iraqia, over terror charges.

Hashimi, who resorted to the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan, rejected the accusations against him, saying that the charges are false and motivated by political enmity of the Shiite- dominated government in Baghdad.