Iraq PM visits pro-democracy activist after abduction, assault
Iraq’s Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi on Sunday visited a pro-democracy activist in a Baghdad hospital two days after the campaigner, critical of pro-Iran armed factions operating in the country, had been abducted and assaulted.
Ali al-Mikdam, a young Iraqi journalist, activist and researcher, had disappeared on Friday, sparking widespread concern from his friends and supporters, before he was released late on Saturday, injured, on the outskirts of Baghdad.
A tweet from Kadhimi’s office said the prime minister had checked up “on the health of journalist and activist Ali al-Mikdam in one of Baghdad’s hospitals after security forces released him from his kidnappers”.
@JeanineHennis Head of UN mission in #Iraq visits Ali Mikdam who was released yesterday after day of abduction, in the hospital. Showing her support to him . pic.twitter.com/5ZPZQQ60oT
— Ammar karim (@ammar_afp) July 11, 2021
Mikdam was a key figure in anti-government protests which swept Iraq for months from October 2019 calling for the removal of Iraq’s political class, which activists branded as inept and corrupt.
The protesters also rallied against the influence of Iran in the war-battered country, where powerful pro-Tehran armed factions have been integrated into the national security apparatus.
Mikdam, after receiving threats, had moved to Istanbul and then Erbil in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region.
He had returned to Baghdad eight days ago, his mother told AFP while he was missing on Friday.
“Only two days ago he told me he had received threats and gave me the phone numbers of his friends to contact them if anything bad happens to him,” his mother said then, holding back tears.
Killings, attempted murders and abductions have targeted more than 70 activists since the protest movement erupted in late 2019.
Authorities have failed to publicly identify or charge the perpetrators of the violence, for which no groups have claimed responsibility.
Pro-democracy activists are often portrayed as foreign stooges by Iraq’s powerful pro-Iran factions.
Last month, Iraq freed a commander of the state-affiliated Hashd al-Shaabi, a Shia paramilitary coalition, two weeks after he was arrested over the murder of a pro-democracy activist.
Mikdam’s most recent analysis, published with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy last month, criticised the ongoing wave of assassinations targeting journalists and scholars by armed factions.