Category Archives: Iraq

Briton given 15 years in Iraqi jail for smuggling antiquities to appeal verdict

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Jim Fitton, 66, hoped for short suspended sentence after collecting fragments during archaeology tour

Lawyers for a British geologist handed a 15-year sentence by an Iraqi judge after being convicted of smuggling antiquities will immediately appeal against the shock verdict, which has left his family “stunned”.

Jim Fitton, 66, arrived at court in Baghdad hoping for a short suspended sentence after being charged with collecting fragments from a site in southern Iraq during an organised archaeology tour. Instead, he was found guilty under a Saddam-era law that legal experts should not have applied to the case.

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Home Office cancels flight to deport Kurdish asylum seekers to Iraq

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Campaigners against flight say Kurdish Iraqis had endured ‘unnecessary torture in pursuit of headlines’

The Home Office has cancelled a chartered deportation flight to Iraq that was due to depart from the UK on Tuesday evening.

Up to 30 Kurdish asylum seekers were facing deportation to northern Iraq in the first flight of its kind for a decade.

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UK about to deport up to 30 Kurdish asylum seekers to Iraq despite dangers

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Foreign Office warns against all travel to the country where Islamic State is still a threat

Up to 30 Kurdish asylum seekers are facing deportation to Iraq in the first Home Office flight of its kind for a decade.

Iraq is deemed to be so dangerous that the Foreign Office warns against all travel there, warning of “a high threat of kidnapping throughout the country including from both Daesh [Islamic State] and other terrorist and militia groups”.

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FBI says it foiled Islamic State sympathizer’s plot to kill George W Bush

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Bureau says in warrant that Ohio man Shihab Ahmed Shihab Shihab planned assassination out of revenge for Iraq war

The FBI claims an Islamic State sympathizer living in Ohio plotted to assassinate George W Bush, but confidential informants helped federal agents foil the plan, according to court records.

Details of the alleged scheme to kill the former president are laid out in a warrant that the FBI obtained in March to search the accused operative’s cellphone records, a 43-page document that was only unsealed in recent days.

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Ministers accused of abandoning UK geologist at risk of execution in Iraq

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Family ‘baffled’ by Foreign Office after Jim Fitton arrested for taking pottery pieces from ancient site

The family of a British man who has been detained in Iraq for more than six weeks and faces execution for collecting fragments of pottery at an ancient site has accused British ministers of abandoning him, and expressed concern over the conditions he is being held in.

Jim Fitton, 66, who was on an organised geology and archaeology trip, was arrested at Baghdad airport as he tried to fly out. He was detained on suspicion of smuggling, after pieces of pottery he had been assured by guides were worthless were found in his luggage.

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Hundreds of Iraqis hospitalised as thick sandstorm blankets country

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Flights suspended and authorities urge people to stay indoors as fifth sandstorm in a month hits Iraq

Hundreds of Iraqis have been taken to hospitals with breathing problems and Baghdad airport suspended flights for several hours as a thick sandstorm blanketed the country, the fifth to engulf Iraq within a month.

Iraqi state media said most of the patients suffered respiratory issues as clinics across the country’s north and west struggled to keep up with the influx. Authorities urged citizens to stay indoors.

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Iraq engulfed by dust storm, leaving dozens hospitalised and flights grounded

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Thick sheet of orange shrouds country as experts say phenomenon to become more frequent due to drought and declining rainfall

Iraq was yet again covered in a thick sheet of orange on Sunday as it suffered the latest in a series of dust storms that have become increasingly common.

Dozens were hospitalised with respiratory problems in the centre and the west of the country.

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Pressure grows on Foreign Office to help free Briton facing death penalty in Iraq

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More than 95,000 sign petition urging the release of geologist Jim Fitton, detained over artefact smuggling allegations

Ministers are under increasing pressure to help free a retired British geologist at risk of facing the death penalty in Iraq over smuggling allegations.

A petition urging the release of father-of-two Jim Fitton, 66, has received more than 95,000 signatures in the three days since it was launched.

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Family of British geologist facing death penalty in Iraq urge UK to intervene

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Retiree Jim Fitton, 66, was detained when airport security found ‘valueless’ pottery shards in luggage

The family of a retired British geologist facing the death penalty in Iraq have called on the UK government to urgently intervene.

Jim Fitton, 66, was detained by authorities in the Middle Eastern country, accused of smuggling, during a geology and archaeology trip.

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Iraq’s ancient buildings are being destroyed by climate change

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Water shortages leading to rising salt concentrations and sandstorms are eroding world’s ancient sites

Some of the world’s most ancient buildings are being destroyed by climate change, as rising concentrations of salt in Iraq eat away at mud brick and more frequent sandstorms erode ancient wonders.

Iraq is known as the cradle of civilisation. It was here that agriculture was born, some of the world’s oldest cities were built, such as the Sumerian capital Ur, and one of the first writing systems was developed – cuneiform. The country has “tens of thousands of sites from the Palaeolithic through Islamic eras”, explained Augusta McMahon, professor of Mesopotamian archaeology at the University of Cambridge.

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Russia ‘using weapons smuggled by Iran from Iraq against Ukraine’

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Iraqi militias and others say undercover networks being used to supply materiel such as RPGs and anti-tank missiles

Russia is receiving munitions and military hardware sourced from Iraq for its war effort in Ukraine with the help of Iranian weapons smuggling networks, according to members of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias and regional intelligence services with knowledge of the process.

RPGs and anti-tank missiles, as well as Brazilian-designed rocket launcher systems, have been dispatched to Russia from Iraq as Moscow’s campaign has faltered in the last month, the Guardian has learned.

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Iraqi man alleging 35 family members were killed by Australian airstrike denied compensation

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Man applied to Australian government for act of grace payment over Mosul strike targeting Islamic State in 2017

An Iraqi man who alleges 35 family members were killed when an Australian airstrike targeting Islamic State instead obliterated a house where civilians were sheltering has been denied a compensation payment by the federal government.

The man, who did not wish to be identified, applied for what is known as an act of grace payment from the Department of Finance last year, arguing that there was strong evidence the Australian Defence Force dropped the bomb in 2017 as part of a series of airstrikes in Mosul by the coalition fighting IS.

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Iran claims responsibility for missile strike near US consulate in Iraq

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Revolutionary Guards say target in Erbil was Israeli ‘strategic centre’ following attack in Syria

Iran has claimed responsibility for a missile barrage that struck early on Sunday near a sprawling US consulate complex in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil, saying it was retaliation for an Israeli strike in Syria that killed two of its Revolutionary Guards.

No injuries were reported in the attack, which marked a significant escalation between the US and Iran. Hostility between the countries has often played out in Iraq, whose government is allied with both countries.

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Iran suspends scheduled round of talks with Saudi Arabia – report

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A day after Iraq said it would host a fresh round of talks between the regional rivals, Iran announced they would not go ahead

Iran has suspended the latest round of talks with regional rival Saudi Arabia, a website affiliated with Iran’s top security body has reported.

Iraq’s foreign ministry had announced on Saturday that it would host the talks on Wednesday. The Iraqi foreign minister, Fuad Hussein, revealed the development during remarks at a diplomatic forum in Antalya on Turkey’s southern coast cited by local media. A foreign ministry spokesperson confirmed the comments to Reuters.

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Ericsson admits breaking DoJ deal over Iraq corruption claims

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Telecoms group’s admission comes days after revelations about alleged bribes given to Islamic State

The Swedish telecoms group Ericsson broke a formal agreement with US prosecutors by withholding evidence about its involvement in corruption, the firm has announced.

The US Department of Justice had notified Ericsson that the firm has failed, as required, to hand over details of alleged corruption in Iraq to DoJ prosecutors.

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Revealed: leaked files show how Ericsson allegedly helped bribe Islamic State

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Telecoms giant’s internal investigators uncover allegations it was involved in corruption in at least 10 countries

Confidential documents have revealed how the telecoms giant Ericsson is alleged to have helped pay bribes to the Islamic State terrorist group in order to continue selling its services after the militants seized control of large parts of Iraq.

The leak of internal investigations at Ericsson, which also found that the firm had put its contractors at risk and allowed them to be kidnapped by the militants, is potentially damaging for the multinational.

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‘A symbol of new beginning’: Mosul’s university library reopens

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The institution suffered a devastating attack by Islamic State in 2014. Eight years on, an international effort has seen it reopen as ‘a lighthouse of knowledge’

The university library in Mosul, which was bombed by Islamic State militants, has opened its doors again, describing itself as a “lighthouse of knowledge” which is “once again burning bright”.

Founded in 1921, the library was ransacked and bombarded by missiles during the IS occupation of the city, with an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 books and manuscripts destroyed. It was reopened on 19 February by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), with financial support from Germany and book donations from around the world, including over 20,000 from the UK.

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‘I feel free when I run’: the young women enjoying a sense of freedom in Iraq

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Displaced Iraqi girls stuck in camps are getting a taste of independence by running, hiking and kickboxing, thanks to a programme teaching them about sport and confidence

The mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan are edged with a tangerine glow as our minibus drives past them. We set off earlier from Erbil, the region’s capital, and are driving to Shaqlawa, a historic city about 50 minutes away, to hike up the nearby Safeen mountain. Inside the minibus, a group of teenage girls are playing their favourite songs.

The teenagers live with their families in one of Erbil’s two main camps for internally displaced people (IDPs), Baharka and Harsham, having fled Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, and surrounding towns such as Tal Afar and Sinjar, when the area was captured by ISISsis in 2014. The hike has been organised by Free to Run, an NGO that supports and empowers women and girls in regions of conflict through sport, offering them life-skills training, and creating safe spaces for them to develop confidence and friends, and to reclaim public space in a country where women’s rights are lacking.

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Kurdish transgender woman shot by brother had been hiding from family

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Friends of Doski Azad said the 23-year-old makeup artist had received repeated death threats from male family members

The Kurdish transgender woman Doski Azad shot dead by her brother last month, had been living in hiding from her family after repeated death threats, friends have said.

According to friends, Azad had had to move home regularly after several death threats by male members of her family.

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There Will Be No More Night review – chilling meditation on modern warfare

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Éléonore Weber’s documentary, air-strike footage of pilots on night missions, could work well in a gallery

This hypnotic meditation on modern warfare from Éléonore Weber is an experimental cine-essay that feels closer to a gallery installation than a documentary. Watching it is a bit of a test of concentration: 75 minutes of helicopter airstrike footage from American and French missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Clip after clip of pilots following what’s on the ground hundreds of metres below. Who is that in their crosshairs: a Taliban fighter holding a Kalashnikov or a farmer with a rake? Farmers know that they get mistaken for fighters, so run and hide their tools when they hear helicopters. Which of course makes them look suspicious.

In the cockpit, we hear American voices: “Request permission to engage.” “We got a guy with an RPG.” This is the notorious video WikiLeaks dubbed Collateral Murder, a US airstrike filmed from an Apache helicopter in 2007. The rocket-propelled grenade launcher turned out to be a camera tripod belonging to a Reuters photographer, who was one of a dozen civilians killed in the attack. It’s impossible to watch and not think of computer games. “Kill! Kill! Kill” we hear in another video – you can almost feel the itch to shoot everything that moves.

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