Kurdistan court summons party leader

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) – On Wednesday, public prosecutor summoned the leader of the second largest party in the Kurdistan Region to appear in a court because of the complaints filed against him.

Speaking to Kurdistan24, Sameh Osman, president of Erbil Court of Appeals, said that the decision to prosecute Nawshirwan Mustafa, general coordinator of the Change Movement (Gorran), might be taken very soon.

“On the case of (Mustafa’s) video/voice that has been published on media, the public prosecutor has registered a complaint [in court] against Nawshirwan Mustafa,” Osman said.

He mentioned that the complaint is under the investigation so far. “Based on the information that I have obtained, the court has decided to prepare the case.”

Kurdistan24 contacted Gorran officials, but they refused to comment on the matter.

In 2015, a media outlet affiliated with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the largest party in the Kurdistan Region, published voice recordings of Mustafa who asks his followers to launch attacks on the headquarters of consulates of foreign countries and oil companies in the Kurdistan Region.

Gorran was founded in 2009 as an official opposition party to the two-party coalition of the KDP and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) that governed the Kurdistan Region.

Gorran started to participate in the Kurdistan Region Government (KRG) in 2013 after winning 24 seats out of 111 parliament seats. They became Kurdistan Region’s second-largest party following KDP that gained 38 seats.

Recently, Gorran and PUK signed a bilateral agreement to unite in the Kurdistan Region Parliament to gained shared political agendas.

Reporting by Mewan Dolamari and Hisham Arafat
Editing by Ava Homa