ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A Kurdish farmer in Kirkuk province said Sunday he was ordered by a court to pay two million Iraqi dinars (over $1,500) in fines following counter lawsuits stemming from an incident in which an Iraqi soldier physically assaulted him during a dispute over farmland last year.
Mohammed Amin, a Kurdish farmer from Sargaran sub-district, north of Kirkuk, was filmed being forcefully pulled by his scarf from his tractor during a confrontation with the Iraqi army in mid-February 2025. He was detained and later released on bail.
"This morning, I had two court hearings at the Kirkuk Court based on lawsuits filed by the Kirkuk Operations Command and the soldier Karrar Shaker, who attempted to choke me,” Amin told Rudaw’s Gashaw Khalid on Sunday, adding that the court has found him guilty in both cases, fining him with one million Iraqi dinar for each.
In May last year, the Iraqi Defense Ministry officially filed a complaint against Amin, “claiming that he threw stones at soldiers and insulted the army,” his lawyer, Bashdar Hassan, told Rudaw at the time, noting that, however, the allegations had “no factual or legal basis.”
In 1975, several Kurdish villages in Kirkuk were declared prohibited oil zones, and residents were stripped of their land rights. By 1977, the Baath Supreme Revolutionary Court had redistributed those lands to Arab settlers under agricultural contracts.
Tensions persist despite the Iraqi parliament passing a land restitution law in January 2025 to return approximately 300,000 dunams (around 75,000 hectares) of confiscated properties to Kurdish and Turkmen owners in Kirkuk and other disputed areas between the federal government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
Speaking at a press conference after the court session on Sunday, Amin described the ruling as “unfair” and said he will take it to the appellate court.
“These lands belong to Kurds, and they must return to their rightful owners,” he added.
Land disputes constitute one of the major points of contention between Erbil and Baghdad. After the fall of the Ba’ath regime in 2003, Iraq adopted Article 140 of the constitution, aimed at reversing demographic changes mainly targeting Kurdish areas. However, implementation has stalled for years.
Similarly, the dispute took 15 Kurdish farmers from east of Kirkuk province to a court in late July.
"They filed one lawsuit against me claiming I blocked their path and threw stones at them last year," farmer Jaber Hamid said at the time. "They also filed another case in my late father's name, even though he has passed away."
Arkan Hamid, whose name was brought up in the lawsuits, said, “We were on our lands until 1987. Between 1990 and 2003, contracts were organized for Arab settlers, and after 2003 we returned to our lands - but now they have come demanding to take them from us.”
“There are farmers who have been fined more than 50 million Iraqi dinars [around $38,000] based on lawsuits filed by Arabs,” he added.
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