Sulaimani court asks parliament to lift immunity of two MPs

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — A Kurdistan Region court has asked parliament to lift the immunity granted to two of its members, in order to try the MPs for defamation, according to copies of the request newly published by the politicians on social media.

A court in Sulaimani province’s town of Penjwen filed a request in mid-December to the Kurdistan Region parliament, asking the legislative body to strip Gorran (Change) MPs Ali Hama Saleh and Daban Mohamad of their office’s guaranteed protection from prosecution, according to the documents shared on Monday. 

The request comes after one of the Region’s border crossings with Iran, Bashmakh, filed a defamation suit against the MPs, claiming they had unjustly harmed the reputation of the institution by accusing it of being a site of cross-border smuggling.

The two MPs had previously expressed concern over smuggling taking place at the Kurdistan Region’s border crossings on several occasions through social media.

Saleh took to Facebook to hit back at the court’s request, saying, “no court had the courage to issue an arrest warrant for the smugglers, but I have to go to court for discussing it.”

Mohamad also responded to the request on Facebook, saying the politicians are willing to be tried in a court of law and face any suits put against them. He also claimed that several officials in Garmiyan and Sulaimani have benefitted from the smuggling, claiming there is video evidence.

“We will definitely go to court, without any immunity,” Saleh told Rudaw on Monday. “We will bring forth our evidence, and let us see if these smugglers will get arrested or not.”

“Smuggling is a process supported by the authorities, and as a result, some people have ended up with millions of dollars, while this is the financial situation in the country,” he added, referring to the dire economic crisis the Region is facing, which has led to delays in civil servants receiving their salaries and mass protests in early December. 

The KRG’s interior and Peshmerga ministries were tasked by Prime Minister Masrour Barzani on Thursday with forming a new, joint force to prevent “violations and illegal movement” at the Kurdistan Region’s border crossings. 

“Legal powers are needed to implement the laws and procedures to confront smuggling and illegal movement at all the crossings,” a statement from the government reads.

The Kurdistan Region has four official border crossings. Three are on the Kurdistan Region-Iran border - Haji Omaran in Erbil province, Bashmakh in Sulaimani province, and Parvizkhan in the Garmiyan administration – and one, the Ibrahim Khalil crossing, is on the Kurdistan Region-Turkey border. There many other unofficial border points.

In September 2020, a network that smuggled hundreds of millions of dinars' worth of goods into the Kurdistan Region through the Parvizkhan crossing was uncovered after an investigation by the Region's finance ministry and customs directorate. 

Three weeks later, the spokesperson for the Kurdistan Region’s deputy prime minister Qubad Talabani announced that the government had formed a committee to study the issue of smuggling "in detail."