SULAIMANI (ESTA) — A group of unidentified armed men in the city of Erbil on Tuesday attacked Ali Mahmood, a well-known political activist, at his residence and kidnapped him to an unknown location.
Earlier this morning, a group of armed men attacked Mahmood’s house and kidnaped him, a source inside the kidnappee family who asked not to be named told Esta Media Network.
Mahmood is an Erbil-based and well-known Kurdish political activist. He is widely known as “Ali Siyasi” who also serves as a Peshmerga veteran and worked as an activist in fields of genocide and Anfal.
The source further stated that the armed men initially inspected Mahmood’s house, where he was later captured and taken to an unknown location.
“We have no clue so far about who was the armed men or where they belonged to,” the source said, adding that a group of Erbil lawyers and activists have begun follow-ups to learn about his current situation.
Esta Media Network has learned that attacking Mahmood’s house comes as earlier last week he accused the father of a senior Erbil official of allegedly belonging to notorious Iraq’s former regime of Ba’ath amid a TV interview.
Mahmood blamed the official’s father for contributing to the brutal ethnic cleansing campaign of Anfal in the 1980s against the Kurdish people in which more than one hundred thousand innocent civilians were killed by cruel means under the rule of the former Ba’ath regime led by dictator Saddam Hussein.
Capturing Mahmood has led to an outcry among the people. Erbil-based journalist Zana Hassan said, “Capturing Mahmood is a cowardly act. He has only a pen not bullets or torture. We hope that his fate will be determined soon.”
In the meantime, Mohammed Kiyani, a former member of the Iraqi Council of Representatives blamed the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) for capturing Mahmood and urged for his immediate release.
