Police task forces found late Wednesday night the body of a Kurdish anti-Iran civilian activist in Penjwen, 96 km east of Sulaymaniyah, in northeastern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region.
Iqbal Muradi, 48, was killed by bullets fired from close range, police sources reported.
They confirmed that it referred the case to the Kurdish security service given that the incident is a suspected political assassination.
“Muradi was one of our party’s cadres, and held an honorable record in confronting the Iranian regime,” Association for Human Rights in Kurdistan of Iran (KMMK) official Omar Alikhanzadeh said.
“He belonged to a dissident family that offered many martyrs and sacrificed a lot, in the way of opposing the Tehran’s regime,” he added.
“Muradi resigned from the party years ago on his own free will and devoted himself to civil activism against the Tehran regime and played an active role in Kurdish circles in Iran,” Alikhanzadeh said.
KMMK issued a statement in which it strongly condemned what it labeled the assassination of one of its prominent members, Muradi, demanding Kurdish security authorities pursues arresting the perpetrators and bringing them before justice.
It urged Iraqi Kurdish authorities to quickly identify and prosecute the perpetrators, saying it suspects they were Iranian agents. Tehran had long cracked down on Iranian Kurdish dissidents and separatists active in the predominantly ethnic Kurdish northwest region of the country.
This is the third such incident in 2018.
Last March, the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Iran accused the Iranian regime of assassinating prominent leader, Qadir Qadri in Sulaymaniyah.
Muradi’s cousin told local media in Kurdistan that the deceased had no spat with anyone and held a clean social record. Muradi’s family accused Iranian intelligence services.
They also reported that Muradi had escaped a previous assassination attempt in 2008.
