VIDEO: Joint Iraq-Kurdistan operation captures suspects in killing of political candidate

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Iraqi National Security Agency on Friday announced the arrest of two individuals charged with the killing earlier in the week of a candidate who had been running for the upcoming legislative elections inside his Baghdad home.

A statement from the agency said that joint forces "managed within seventy-two hours, and in cooperation with the security services in the Kurdistan Region, to arrest the perpetrators of the criminal operation."

The candidate, lawyer Abdul Moneim al-Salmani, was killed when gunmen shot him while he was walking out of his house in the Jamia neighborhood located in the western suburbs of the capital.

Many candidates running in multiple national and provincial elections have been assassinated since the fall of the former regime in 2003.

The statement added that the two perpetrators were tracked while attempting to flee to Sulaimani province in the Kurdistan Region, "and they were found in possession of the weapon used in the execution of the crime."

The statement indicated that "their statements were recorded and referred to the competent legal authorities to take just measures against them."

A video confession later released by security forces appeared to show the suspects claiming that they had paid a large sum of money to the lawyer in order to get their brother out of prison, but it never happened.

Past instances of security cooperation between federal forces and those of the autonomous Kurdistan Region have resulted in the arrest of multiple suspects accused of carrying out a wide variety of criminal acts.

Editing by John J. Catherine