ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraqi Parliament Speaker Haibat al-Halbousi and other Sunni politicians on Wednesday called for accountability from Iraqi and Lebanese governments following the death of Ahmed al-Alwani, former lawmaker from Anbar, after he was found dead in an apartment in Beirut.
Alwani died “under mysterious circumstances, which demand clarifying the details of the incident and reaching the truth,” Halbousi said in a post on his Facebook page, noting that they will “closely” follow the updates, urging Iraqi and Lebanese authorities to “uncover the truth of what happened … in accordance with the law.”
Alwani, 57, was a Sunni politician from the Iraqi province of Anbar. He was arrested at his home in its capital of Ramadi in December 2013 amid massive protests in Sunni areas in connection with the post-2003 power-sharing agreement in Iraq that was, and is, dominated by Shiite rule.
Omar Mishaan Dabous, Anbar’s governor, also mourned his death.
The former lawmaker “passed away victimized and wronged, following the ordeal of imprisonment and the cruelty of injustice he endured,” Dabous wrote in a post on social media.
Lebanese authorities announced finding the body of Alwani late Tuesday. Local media suggested that he was strangled to death. They also pointed to arresting one out of two suspects.
Authorities appointed a judge to supervise the case to “uncover the circumstances of the crime and determine how it occurred,” the state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported.
Iraqi Ambassador to Beirut Mohammed Reza Al-Husseini also said they are awaiting “the final report from the Lebanese security agencies to officially declare the details of the crime.”
Meanwhile, Alwani’s media office disclosed specific details regarding his travel to Lebanon on November 5, including the departure gate number and arrival time. He travelled from Erbil.
“Recordings obtained by the Office show the suspects leaving the building at 23:57. This does not definitively establish the exact time of the crime, which remains under the jurisdiction of forensics and criminal investigators,” they said in a statement shared Wednesday on Alwani’s Facebook page.
A statement from Alwani’s wife has also gone viral on Iraqi media, alleging that her husband was called by a female “Sunni politician figure” asking him to “head immediately to Beirut.” The wife’s name has not been mentioned, presumably due to cultural patterns that discourage public appearance for women.
"Al-Alwani booked an urgent flight ticket through a friend and traveled immediately via Erbil International Airport,” she added, noting that he video called his family before his phone was switched off.
An outspoken critic of then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Alwani was a leading figure and organizer of the massive Sunni anti-government protest camps established in Ramadi throughout 2013.
In an interview posted on his Facebook page in July, Alwani claims that “Maliki’s government ordered the arrest” because of his stance in facing “corruption, extremism, and parties’ allegiances to other countries.”
Sunni protests began after Maliki’s government arrested Rafi al-Issawi, then finance minister. The arrest was widely viewed by Sunni populations as an attempt to sideline the group in the post-2003 political system led by the majority-based Shiite rule.
In November 2014, Alwani was sentenced to death by hanging. However, after spending over a decade on death row, advocacy from NGOs and local tribal mediation eventually led to his acquittal and formal release on April 23, 2025, after which he immediately relocated to Erbil.
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