Category: Legal Judicial

Iraqis on Wednesday marked the second anniversary of the assassination of Iraqi researcher Hisham al-Hashimi and criticised the judiciary for failing to bring the perpetrators to justice. Al-Hashimi, a security expert on both Sunni and Shia jihadist groups including the Islamic State and Iran-backed groups in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen, had been an active speaker for the local and the international media. He wasshot dead by gunmen outside his home in eastern Baghdad on 6 July 2020. Iraq’s then-Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi vowed to bring Hashimi’s killers to justice, but after two years of th…

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While Middle Eastern countries have traditionally been among the world’s greatest importers of weapons, many are now increasingly developing their own indigenous military industries. This has been especially noticeable in the field of drone production, which within just a few years has fundamentally changed the geopolitical landscape while also reengineering dynamics on regional battlefields. Many powers in the region have realised that low-cost unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) may be the most effective response to both accumulated security challenges and economic constraints. Non-state actors …

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Only a few months have rolled by since Saudi Arabia pulled off its largest campaign of mass execution by beheading 81 people in a single day, and it seems the scandalous misadventure has been clouded by the passage of time. Corporate media’s coverage of the Middle East has barely been affected by that travesty, and human rights advocacy organisations appear to be preoccupied with other things, including their unvarying Iran fixation. Even by the standards of Saudi, one of the most profligate practitioners of capital punishment, such a large-scale execution is rare. In fact, it has been recorde…

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The Iraqi foreign ministry and an Iraqi lawmaker said that there is no evidence so far to proveclaims by Belarus that “mass executions” were carried out against Iraqi migrants on the Belarus-Poland border earlier this year. Belarus on June 21claimed that its investigative committee handed over “documents” to a visiting Iraqi delegation, allegedly proving that Polish border guards have carried out “mass executions” against 135 Iraqi migrants on the Polish side of the border with Belarus. Ahmed al-Sahaf, the Iraqi foreign ministry’s spokesperson. said early last week that the ministry has formed…

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