ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The Iraqi ambassador to Portugal, Saad Mohammed Ridha, has been recalled by Baghdad after he was unable to maintain diplomatic immunity for his twin sons, who are accused of brutally assaulting a teenager.
“Portugal has not declared the Iraqi ambassador ‘persona non grata,’ he was recalled by his own country,” the country’s foreign minister, Augusto Santos Silva, told reporters in Lisbon according to the AFP news agency.
Prosecutors have investigated the ambassador’s sons, Haider and Ridha Ali, about a brutal attack in August 2016 on a 15-year-old boy whose lawyer said left him in a coma with a fractured skull after he was run over with a car and beaten and kicked on the ground.
The alleged bar brawl took place in the town of Ponte de Sor, where one of the brothers was training as a pilot, Rudaw reported. Investigators were unable to move forward with criminal charges because the sons have diplomatic immunity.
Saad paid 40,000 euros (about $43,000) to the victim’s family and an additional 12,000 euros to cover the boy’s treatment, per the terms of an out-of-court settlement, the Lusa News Agency in Portugal reported on Tuesday.
Saad has been Iraq's ambassador to Portugal since 2015. He was born in Baghdad and has worked in Iraq's Ministry of Foreign Affairs where he has held nearly a dozen posts since 1970, according to the ministry's website.
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