UNAMI urges Basra authorities to investigate killing of female activist

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) on Wednesday urged authorities to investigate the assassination of a female activist in Basra who was killed on Tuesday.

UNAMI expressed its “grave concern” over the murder, and called on authorities in Basra “to thoroughly investigate the circumstances surrounding the killing to determine its motives and to bring the perpetrator(s) to justice.”

“UNAMI condemns all acts of violence, in particular against women, including murder, threats and intimidation, as wholly unacceptable.”

Suad Ali was the head of al-Weed al-Alaiami For Human Rights and was actively involved in the Basra protests.

Security camera footage shows a gunman opening fire at the human rights activist in the Abbasiyah area in central Basra. She instantly died while her husband, now being treated in the hospital, was seriously injured.

“At 15:30, the suspect, Imad Talib, shot and killed human rights activist, Suad Lajlaj al-Ali with a headshot and wounded her driver with a shot on the back [sic],” Hisham al-Hashimi, a security analyst at Al-Nahrain Center for Strategic Studies in Iraq, and a consultant to the Iraqi government, wrote on Twitter.

For the past three months, people in Basra have staged many protests, which later spread to other Iraqi cities, demanding better public services, clean water, regular electricity supply, employment, and an end to widespread corruption in Iraqi government institutions.

Dozens of protestors were killed during the demonstrations.

The assassination now raises fears protestors, organizers, and activists are being targeted.

“There’s a worrying trend of targeted attacks on organizers and activists associated with Basra protests,” Mehiyar Kathem, a researchassociate at University College London, tweeted.

Activists recently told the Associated Press of a campaign of intimidation and arbitrary detentions by powerful Iran-backed Shia militias and political groups in Basra, a city of over two million people in southern Iraq.

During the protests, demonstrators burned the headquarters of Iranian-backed groups and Iran’s consulate in Basra amid public outrage at perceived government indifference toward an underserved and beleaguered populace.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany