Mother blames authorities’ inaction for daughter’s murder

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The mother of a teenage girl allegedly murdered by her father in Erbil told Rudaw that her husband had a long history of abuse and violence, saying that she had previously reached out to the Kurdistan Region’s domestic violence helpline but did not receive a response.

13-year-old Raha Bryar was found killed inside their house in Erbil’s Mufti neighborhood on Friday morning. Her father, Bryar Fazel, the main suspect, turned himself in to the police the day after. However, he is yet to be tried. 

The young girl was “brutally tortured” before being murdered, according to Erbil police spokesperson Hogr Aziz, who described the father as a drug user. 

Jihan Yassin, Raha’s mother, had left the house and separated from her husband over a year and half ago due to his continued abuse and mistreatment.

“He would beat me and imprison me. I was not even allowed to watch the outside from a window,” Yassin told Rudaw’s Shaho Amin on Sunday.

“Beating, psychological damage, hunger, thirst, I endured it all for my children.”

The grieving mother says she has filed complaints, reached out to women’s rights organizations, and called the Kurdistan Region’s domestic violence helpline, but that her calls for help did not lead to any results.

Safeen Tahir, head of the Combating Violence Against Women Directorate at the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), claimed that their hotlines are operative 24/7 and that no call goes unanswered by their directorate.

“We do not know which date she has called us or if she has called us at all. Therefore, I suggest she comes to give us a visit and tells us the date. No call goes by without being answered by us, but it depends on whether or not the caller waits for a helpline operator to answer the call,” Tahir told Rudaw’s Shahyan Tahseen on Monday.

Yassin, who is yet to officially obtain a divorce from her husband, says that she has not seen her three daughters since leaving the house and had only spoken to Raha twice since.

She added that she is currently unable to care for her other two daughters and that they remain with her husband’s family. 

Fazel, a former policeman, had previously threatened his own family members and his in-laws’ for “interfering” in his family matters. In August, he had kidnapped his father-in-law and shot him twice in front of his grandchildren, leaving him wounded, according to Yassin.

In addition to Raha, Sakina Omar, Fazel’s aunt, was also found in the house suffering from injuries allegedly inflicted by her nephew.

“Bryar [Fazel] was very bad to us. He would torture us. He would hit us with cables. He would hit us with weapons,” said Omar, adding she witnessed the suspect kill the teenage girl.

Fazel and his three daughters had been living with Omar since Yassin left the house.

The aunt said that two policemen and a local chieftain once visited the house inquiring about Fazel’s whereabouts, saying that she had to lie and tell them he was not home as Fazel allegedly held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her if she told them the truth.

Yassin said that she had gone to a station of the Combating Violence Against Women Directorate in Erbil, but was told that where she lived fell outside of their jurisdiction.

Tahir said they have two stations across Erbil, none of which are located in Mufti neighborhood where the family lived.

Multiple complaints have been filed to the Combating Violence Against Women Directorate against Fazel since 2019, according to the directorate’s head.

One of the complaints was filed by Fazel’s father in 2019, after allegedly being shot and wounded by his son. Tahir said that the father withdrew the complaint a week later, but Fazel was still imprisoned for carrying an unlicensed weapon.

It is unclear how long he was in prison for.

Tahir added that another complaint was filed by an anonymous informant in 2022, accusing Fazel of abusing one of the children. The child was brought before the court and denied being assaulted by her father, claimed Tahir.

Considering the young girl’s age, a KRG representative for legal cases involving minors was called in and he told the judge that “at the moment, no violence is being committed against this child,” according to Tahir.

It was not revealed which of the three children was brought before the court, but Tahir claimed that it was not Raha.

The head of the Combating Violence Against Women Directorate claimed that the representative’s statement was not enough for the judge to close down the case against Fazel. The suspect was asked to appear before the court multiple times but did not attend, therefore a warrant for his arrest was issued, he added.

Fazel had been relocating constantly for the past few months, preventing the authorities from detaining him, according to Tahir.

Yassin called on the KRG and Prime Minister Masrour Barzani to bring justice for her daughter and to hold her husband accountable. 

“Punish my husband in the most vicious way possible. Do to him what he did to my daughter, and then hang him in front of my eyes.”

In 2021, The Kurdistan Region launched an app to tackle violence against women. It also set up a support hotline for victims of violence in 2018, about seven years after the KRG passed its Combating Domestic Violence Law, criminalizing domestic violence and equipping the directorate to combat violence by investigating it.