Female activist says she survived an assassination attempt in Baghdad

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — A female activist and paramedic said she was the victim of an assassination attempt in Baghdad late on Thursday. 

Intisar Nahi, a paramedic who worked in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square helping injured protesters since the start of the protest movement in October 2019, said on Twitter that gunmen on a motorcycle shot at her. She said she ran away, but was injured.

This is not the first attempt on her life. In December 2020, Nahi said she was kidnapped and tortured by an unknown armed group. She said they pierced her body with an electric drill. Four days after her abduction, she was found alive, dumped on a highway south of Baghdad.

In an interview with al-Sharqiya TV in December, Nahi said her abductors tried to force her to confess on video that she had connections with the US embassy and was receiving funds for the protests, or that she belonged to the Baath party. She said she refused to make such a statement.

"We as women are unprotected... My service was nothing but humanitarian to help my brothers who protested in Tahrir," Nahi said in the interview. 

She returned to Tahrir Square on Tuesday to join protests demanding accountability for those responsible for killing activists. 

At least 34 activists have been killed in targeted assassinations since the protests began in October 2019. Iranian-backed militias are widely accused of carrying out the killings.

Women have been among those targeted. Sports coach and activist Reham Yacoub was shot dead in Basra on August 19, 2020. Activist Mary Muhammad, from Anbar, was kidnapped by unknown armed militias near Tahrir Square in November 2019 and released a few days later. Lodya Remon Albarti, who led women’s marches in Basra, survived a shooting on August 17.

In a strongly-worded statement last October, UN experts described an increasingly hostile situation for Iraq’s activist women. “In Iraq, against a harsh backdrop of war and insecurity, women human rights defenders face prejudice, exclusion by society and by political leaders, as well as physical attacks, sexual violence, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, torture and even death,” reads the statement.