Erbil: 39 cars stolen in 10 months, police return 23

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Over the past 10 months, 39 cars have been stolen in the capital of the Kurdish semi-autonomous region of Iraq, and 23 have been returned to their owners, police said on Friday.

The number has decreased when compared to 2017, where 56 cars were stolen, the spokesperson for the General-Directorate of Erbil Police, Hogir Aziz, told Kurdistan 24 on Friday.

He mentioned that all the arrested car thieves had been sent to court while police continue to look for the few remaining ones.

Rebaz Kawes, responsible for the department of missing and stolen cars in the police directorate, explained to Kurdistan 24 that almost 50 percent of complaints his department receives turn out to be untrue.

“People often contact us and issue complaints that their cars are being stolen, but when we start to investigate, it turns out that they parked somewhere else, and they forgot the location,” Kawes said.

“Forgetting the parking location of the car is very common in summer and winter, namely among the elderly people,” he added.

Kawes also noted that sometimes the case of stealing car turns out to be social or family-related issues.

“Among the registered cases are those that the car has been secretly taken out by a family member such as son, daughter, brother, or wife and that the owner of the car thought somebody else stole it,” he stated.

The city of Erbil has a population of almost one million people. According to traffic police data, there are over 1.5 million cars and vehicles in the Kurdistan Region.

Editing by John J. Catherine