Iraqi Kurdistan parliament. Photo: Courtesy/Perleman
HEWLÊR-Erbil, Iraq’s Kurdistan region,— Iraqi Kurdistan Parliament voted to strip Kurdistan Islamic Group (KIG) lawmaker Soran Omar of parliamentary immunity on Thursday during a contentious session that saw Speaker Rewaz Fayaq leave her position on the dais and participate in a multiparty walkout, leaving her deputy to push through the measure.
A total of 57 MPs voted in favor of removing Omar’s immunity, achieving a slight majority in the 111-member chamber.
Omar is now vulnerable to threatened prosecution based on a complaint lodged against him by Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Prime Minister Masrour Barzani. Earlier, the KIG legislator accused Barzani of corruption.
Omar claims that Masrour Barzani owns a company and a bank.
Soran Omar said during a press conference on Thursday that the decision by the Kurdistan Parliament to strip him of his parliamentary immunity was not only directed against him, but against all the parties sitting in parliament.
“With my true votes, and despite the fraud in the election, I got 42,400 votes, which is more than the combined total for twelve members of parliament that participated in today’s session,” Omar said of some of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) members who voted to remove his legal protections.
Soran Omar, Kurdish MP from the Kurdistan Islamic Group (Komal, KIG), 2020. Photo: Omar’s FB
“There are members of parliament that only got 192 votes in the election and today they raised their hands to lift the immunity on us. They plan to take us to the court that designated Sardasht Osman as a terrorist,” Omar added, referring to a journalist who was abducted and murdered ten years ago after writing articles that criticized the ruling parties. A government investigation into the murder suggested that he was murdered by a member of a terrorist group for not following their commands, but most reject this as a manufactured explanation.
Votes to strip Omed Khoshnaw of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Shirin Amin and Ali Hama Salih of the Change Movement (Gorran) of their immunity all failed to attract a significant number of votes.
Just three MPs voted to strip Khoshnaw of his immunity, while four each cast votes against Hama Salih and Amin, who is the widow of slain journalist Kawa Garmiani.
Lawmakers from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Gorran, the New Generation Movement, the KIG, and the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU) participated in the walkout.
After Speaker Fayaq left her chair in protest, her deputy Hemin Hawrami took over leadership of the session. Hawrami is a member of the KDP, as is Barzani.
The KDP orchestrated the inclusion of the stripping of parliamentary immunity from all four MPs on the agenda, but the decision to dust off far older complaints against other MPs could veil the targeting of Omar for the comments about PM Barzani, a senior KDP figure.
Massoud Barzani has closed the Kurdish parliament in October 2015 after his term as president of Kurdistan has expired and his KDP forces prevented Kurdistan parliament speaker, Yusuf Mohammed Sadiq, from Gorran Movement, from entering Erbil and Kurdistan PM at that time Nechirvan Barzani has removed four members of his cabinet from the Change Movement and replaced them with KDP politicians.
Ekurd political analyst Henase, the KDP and the Barzanis can close the parliament anytime they want as they did it in 2015.
Iraqi Kurdistan is not unified region, it is divided politically and geographically between the KDP led by Massoud Barzani and PUK led by the Talabani’s clan. The capital city of Erbil is under control of Barzani’s KDP forces.
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