IRAQ: MAN WHO MURDERED KURDISH FAMILY IN BAGHDAD SENTENCED TO DEATH

June 25, 2021:

A man who killed a Kurdish family of three in Baghdad was sentenced to death on 8 June 2021, a lawyer told Rudaw. 
In accordance with Article 406 of the Iraqi penal code, he received three death sentences by hanging, Diyar Bahjat, an attorney who attended the trial at Karkh Court told Rudaw on 8 June.
Bahjat said the suspect confessed to the charges in court.
Article 406 of the Iraqi penal code says anyone “who willfully kills another is punishable by death” in a number of circumstances, including if the murder “is in exchange for money.”
Dara Rauf and his wife Aliya Rashid, originally from Sulaimani in the Kurdistan Region, were stabbed to death on 14 September last year in the Mansour neighborhood of west Baghdad.  Their daughter, Sheelan Dara, was also smothered to death.
Two days later, a branch of the Kurdistan Region Security Council (KRSC) announced they had arrested Hussein Nasir, who was an acquaintance of Rauf and a guard at the Russian Embassy in Iraq.
The KRSC released a video purportedly showing Nasir confessing to the triple murder, shortly before they handed him over to Baghdad. 
The victims’ bodies were returned to Sulaimani city to be buried at Saywan 1 Cemetery. 
Nasir said in a video confession he had known the family for four years. He stated he visited Rauf asking for a loan, saying he was in debt. When Rauf said he did not have the money to lend, they started to fight. 
“There was a knife near me, I grabbed it and stabbed him,” Nasir said. “He fell to the ground and as I was trying to get rid of the evidence, his wife came.”
Afterwards, Nasir stabbed the wife and then smothered the couple’s daughter with a pillow.