Former Iraqi MP Ahmed al-Alwani Found Dead In Beirut
Lebanese officials say he was struck and strangled in a rented apartment; his office calls it an assassination as Lebanon’s prosecutor leads the investigation
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) - Former Iraqi lawmaker Ahmed al-Alwani was found dead in an apartment in Beirut’s Tariq al-Jadideh neighborhood, days after flying in from Erbil, Lebanese security and judicial officials told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
The officials said he was hit on the head and then strangled, and that police entered the apartment on Monday night and found his body.
Lebanon’s top prosecutor, Judge Ahmed Rami al-Hajj, is overseeing the investigation, which is being carried out by the Information Branch of the Internal Security Forces, according to the state National News Agency.
Alwani left Erbil on November 5 on a Middle East Airlines flight and landed in Beirut that afternoon, according to a timeline released by his media office. The officials told AP he reserved a room at a hotel in Beirut’s Hamra district and then moved to an apartment rented for two days for $200 by two Syrians and a Lebanese national.
When the real estate agent tried to reach him after the two days, he did not answer. His family told the Iraqi embassy in Beirut that they had lost contact with him for four days and that his phones were off.
Al Hadath television reported earlier, citing its sources, that four people visited him at the hotel before he disappeared, and that his phones were switched off.
Arab media reported that a suspect has been arrested, which Lebanese authorities have not officially confirmed.
Alwani’s office called his death an “assassination” and a “treacherous crime,” and said people seen in surveillance footage left the apartment 14 minutes after his flight landed, questioning whether they knew in advance that he was coming. Iraq’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mohammed Reda al-Husseini, said the Iraqi embassy is following the case and awaiting the Lebanese authorities’ final report. Alwani, a Sunni politician from Anbar who represented the province in parliament, was arrested in December 2013 on terrorism charges, after a raid on his home in Ramadi in which his brother was killed, and was released in April 2025, according to AP. He was a prominent critic of Iranian influence in Iraq and of Iran-backed armed groups, according to Al Jazeera, and met Kurdish leaders in Erbil in August 2025.