British and US troops invaded Iraq in 2003 and ousted Saddam Hussein, claiming he possessed weapons of mass destruction. Sanctions against the Iraqi oil industry were immediately dropped and dozens of Western companies rushed in to make money.

A barrister representing a British businessman accused of bribing an Iraqi oil official has told a trial in London the evidence against him included the "flimsiest of innuendos."

Adrian Eissa QC said his client, Stephen Whiteley, 65, had not been a party to any corrupt payments made by his employer, Monaco-based Unaoil via an intermediary, Basil al-Jarah.

​​Whiteley is accused, along with Ziad Akle, 45, and Paul Bond, 68, of conspiracy to give corrupt payments to Oday Al Quoraishi, an official in Iraq’s state-owned South Oil Company in return for a lucrative contract for single point moorings (SPM) equipment between 2009 and 2010.

Evacuations in response to worker protest at Basra Gas Co to demand payment of delayed salaries, say Shell executives.

​Royal Dutch Shell evacuated some 60 foreign staff from Iraq's Basra Gas Company (BGC) as a security measure following a protest over delayed pay, company officials said on Thursday, adding production was unaffected.
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The staff were flown out of the country on Wednesday after workers protested at the headquarters of BGC, a joint venture between state-owned South Gas Company, Shell and Mitsubishi, to demand payment of their delayed salaries, officials said.

​"Shell confirms that as result of a security breach at the accommodation camp of Basra Gas Company, we have temporarily relocated Shell secondees," Shell said in emailed comments.

​Tehran pushed Shia factions to support Kadhimi as Iraq's new PM in return for US unfreezing some of its assets in Europe

A "behind-the-scenes deal" between the US and Iran has paved the way for the designation of Mustafa al-Kadhimi as Iraq's new prime minister, according to the London-based Middle East Eye (MEE).

As part of the deal, Tehran agreed to support al-Kadhimi, a former director of the Iraqi National Intelligence Service, on condition that Washington would stop freezing some of its assets in Europe, MEE said.

Kadhimi's designation was strongly rejected by pro-Iranian Kataib Hezbollah, a Shia militia, and several political leaders.

Nevertheless, other Shia political factions affiliated with Iran gave green light to his nomination after Iran ordered them to stand by al-Kadhimi in return for some relieving from US sanctions which impose a heavy burden on the Iranian economy, MEE quoted senior Iraqi political sources as saying.

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, Iraq has one of the highest numbers of missing people in the world. The International Commission on Missing Persons, which has been working in partnership with the Iraqi government to help recover and identify the missing, estimates that the number could range from 250,000 to one million. Since 2016, Human Rights Watch has been documenting continued enforced disappearances by Iraqi security forces. As far as the organization is aware, authorities in Baghdad and in the Kurdistan Region have done little to punish officers implicated in disappearances.

Enforced Disappearances from 2014 to 2017

In 2018, Human Rights Watch issued a report that documented 78 cases of men and boys forcibly disappeared in Iraq between April 2014 and October 2017. The majority of these 78 people were detained in 2014, with the most recent in October 2017. In three more cases, men who were detained and disappeared in 2014 and 2015 later were released. They said they had been detained for periods ranging from 34 to 130 days by the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF or Hashad, formally under the control of the prime minister) or the National Security Service in unofficial detention sites. All said they had been beaten throughout their time in detention.
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Military and security forces apprehended 34 of the 78 men and boys at checkpoints as part of anti-Islamic State (also known as ISIS) terrorism screening procedures and another 37 at their homes. All the disappearances at checkpoints but one targeted people who are from or lived in areas that were under ISIS control. In most cases of people arrested at home, security forces gave the families no reason for the arrests, although most of the families suspect the reasons were related to the detainees’ Sunni Arab identity. In at least six of these cases, the circumstances or what arresting officers said indicated that they were at least potentially related to the fight against ISIS.

Dr. Marwa al-Khafaji’s homecoming after 20 days in a hospital isolation ward was met by spite. Someone had barricaded her family home’s gate with a concrete block.
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The message from the neighbors was clear: She had survived coronavirus, but the stigma surrounding the disease would be a more pernicious fight.

The young physician was catapulted into the front lines of Iraq’s battle with the virus in early March. The Associated Press followed her tale from inside a squalid quarantine room to her return to the streets of her childhood, where she found piercing glares had displaced greetings.

​Her struggles mirror those of Iraq’s battered health system, laid bare by the pandemic: Hospitals without supplies, medical staff intimidated by an unknown disease, and widespread stigma associated with infection.

​The plummeting oil price has devastated Iraq's economy, as coronavirus lockdown puts youth protests on hold.

​On Wednesday, Iraq's Parliament voted for a new prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, who now has a month to form a new government.

He faces many challenges beyond just forming a government; the key ones being the budget and dealing with an unemployed youthful protest movement that brought the previous government to its knees, ousted former Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, and now waits to see what the new government will look like.

In 2018, I was invited along with a few other journalists to a background briefing in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, with a senior adviser to then-Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. 

None of us were expecting much from it and we were not disappointed. However, I did take away one piece of information that confirmed what I had suspected for a long time, that the Iraqi economy was in severe flux. It was not news but the severity of it was clearly at the forefront of the adviser's mind.

Iraq’s judiciary has been under pressure to exonerate corrupt politicians being investigated for embezzlement and abuse of power, the spokesperson for the Supreme Judicial Council said yesterday.

Judge Abdul Sattar Bayrakdar said while the judiciary is taking serious steps to fight corruption and hold embezzlers to account, including some politicians and ministers, they have launched social media campaigns through their allies residing outside of Iraq to accuse Iraqi courts of persecuting them for political reasons.

He explained that the “corrupt politicians” launched their social media campaigns after their political parties failed to close their cases or provide them with protection.

“Some of them [the corrupt] are members of the House of Representatives who enjoy immunity,” he added.
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“The judiciary’s message to those who steal public money is whatever your status or position, your lies will not save you,” he said.


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Source

UK Foreign Minister Dominic Raab said the UK was joining the global call for a worldwide ceasefire to military action as the planet works to combat COVID-19. One week later the British military conducted airstrikes in Iraq.

The Peace Pledge Union (PPU) has accused the UK's Ministry of Defence (MoD) of attempting to use the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak to 'hide from scrutiny' after it was recently revealed that British airstrikes were conducted in Iraq while the Prime Minister was in hospital. 
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Symon Hill, Campaigns Manager of the PPU, explained why these revelations concern him and his network of anti-militarists and pacifist. The airstrikes, which were announced on the MoD website on 25 April 2020, were actually conducted one week after the UK's Foreign Minister Dominic Raab said that his government was backing the calls for a global ceasefire amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Betrayed by pro-Iranian players, nominee says he rejects pressures to derail cabinet formation

​Iraq’s prime minister-designate has indicated for the first time serious difficulties in forming a cabinet, saying political pressure he has come under is damaging to the national interest.

Mustafa Al Kadhimi, a former intelligence chief supported by the United States, urged “everyone to put the interest of Iraq above everything else”.

He said in a tweet late on Monday he would only acknowledge forces who “support the course of the state”.

The comments are Mr Al Kadhimi’s clearest response yet to the delays he is encountering ahead of a May 9 deadline to secure a vote of confidence from parliament.

The country has another new prime minister nominee—but no new hopes of success.

​Raise your hand if you were aware that there was a new Iraqi prime minister-designate. No, not the guy who was nominated in mid-March or the guy before him. The new, new one. For those keeping score at home (which at this point is almost no one): On April 9, Iraqi President Barham Salih tapped Mustafa al-Kadhimi to be the country’s next prime minister.

​The incumbent, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, resigned in late November but continues to lead a caretaker government. The man initially chosen to succeed him, Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi, could not form a government and then came Adnan al-Zurfi, who was also unable to garner enough support to form a government, resulting in Kadhimi’s nomination.

America’s newspapers of record in turn published what now seem to be perfunctory articles about the maybe new Iraqi prime minister that read a lot like so many previous articles about all the other Iraqi prime minister-designates dating back to the invasion of Iraq. Like his predecessors, Kadhimi apparently can balance between the United States and Iran and is a person of integrity who can elicit political support from different factions.

But such testimonials, in typical fashion, are followed by caveats about the significant shortcomings of Iraq’s political system that will likely make it difficult for the prime minister-designate to form a government and subsequently govern. The articles generally close with a fingers-crossed quality. It is a formula that journalists in the field and their editors at home seem to have perfected.