ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Dozens of Baghdad’s teachers and exam proctors on Sunday protested an arrest warrant issued for one of their colleagues who exposed a case of fraud relating to a former police official’s son. Uday al-Salihi, the head of the examination department in al-Rusafa’s education directorate, in February removed a young man from a ministerial examination, accusing him of impersonating the son of former Federal Police Commander Raed Shaker Jawdat, and taking the test on his behalf. According to Salihi, once he was removed from the exam room, the young man admitted to receiving 5,000 dollars to take the exam instead of Jawdat’s son. Nonetheless, when the case was brought to relevant authorities, it was not the impersonator that faced the legal repercussions, but rather Salihi, who was served an arrest warrant. It is not yet clear what the proctor has been accused of. “This is a message for everyone, if you see someone cheating or taking exams on behalf of someone else, just keep your mouth closed and do not speak,” Nidhal Muhammad, a school principal, told Rudaw's Halkawt Aziz on Sunday. The protesters also called on relevant authorities to reconsider the case and to not rush to judgement until all the facts are uncovered. “If the state wishes to protect the reputation of the Iraqi degree, it must protect those working in the examination department,” said Khalid Ghazi, an exam proctor. Jawdat has been previously accused of multiple cases of corruption and embezzlement. Iraq’s integrity commission summoned Jawdat in February on charges of embezzling around 7 billion Iraqi dinars during his tenure as the commander of the federal police between 2014 to 2016. Rampant corruption plagues all levels of the Iraqi state, and official figures published in 2021 estimated that well over 400 billion dollars has gone missing from state coffers since former dictator Saddam Hussein's regime was overthrown in 2003. The crisis-hit country ranks 157 out of 180 countries in Transparency International's corruption perceptions index.
