Iraq’s Top Court Holds Political Forces Responsible for Widespread Corruption

Iraqi taxis drive past a Christmas tree decorated with images of slain members of the Popular Mobilization Forces, including commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and slain commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Qasem Soleimani, at Tahrir Square in the capital Baghdad, on New Year's day on January 1, 2023. (AFP)
Iraqi taxis drive past a Christmas tree decorated with images of slain members of the Popular Mobilization Forces, including commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and slain commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Qasem Soleimani, at Tahrir Square in the capital Baghdad, on New Year's day on January 1, 2023. (AFP)
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Iraq’s Top Court Holds Political Forces Responsible for Widespread Corruption

Iraqi taxis drive past a Christmas tree decorated with images of slain members of the Popular Mobilization Forces, including commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and slain commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Qasem Soleimani, at Tahrir Square in the capital Baghdad, on New Year's day on January 1, 2023. (AFP)
Iraqi taxis drive past a Christmas tree decorated with images of slain members of the Popular Mobilization Forces, including commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and slain commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Qasem Soleimani, at Tahrir Square in the capital Baghdad, on New Year's day on January 1, 2023. (AFP)

The Federal Supreme Court in Iraq recognized the lack of real will of the political class to combat corruption. This came in the wake of the Iraqi National Security Agency announcing that it had uncovered the largest crude oil smuggling network.  

“Iraqis have lost their confidence in public offices due to widespread financial and administrative corruption among employees at a time when the administrative system in Iraq was one of the most prominent systems in the Middle East,” said head of the Federal Supreme Court Judge Jassim Mohammed Abboud.  

While the parties behind the oil smuggling network remain unknown, defendants accused of embezzling $2.5 billion from a government taxpayer account are still at large. Nour Zuhair, the only defendant arrested in the case, was released on bail with authorities hoping to recover stolen funds.  

As for Abboud, he told the Iraqi News Agency (INA), that corruption in Iraq is divided into two types. 

“Petty corruption is what is committed by junior employees, and this leads to the Iraqi citizen losing confidence in the public office,” he said. 

“Grand corruption is what is committed by senior officials or by some political parties. This corruption is what impedes the building of the state,” he explained.  

Abboud stressed that “the lack of a real national strategy and intention to fight corruption is the reason for its prevalence.”  

“When there is a real political will to end corruption, it will end,” he asserted.  

Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat, Iraqi legal expert Ahmed al-Abadi said: “Efforts to combat corruption are minor compared to its prevalence in state institutions.”  

“This is due to lack of political will,” explained Abadi, adding that those involved in major corruption cases are not pursued until after they had left their post in the government. 



Israel’s Military Admits to Shooting at Ambulances in Gaza

 Palestinians buy clothes in a shop next to a destroyed apartment building in preparation for Eid al-Fitr celebrations at Al-Rimal neighborhood in the center of Gaza City Friday March 28, 2025.(AP)
Palestinians buy clothes in a shop next to a destroyed apartment building in preparation for Eid al-Fitr celebrations at Al-Rimal neighborhood in the center of Gaza City Friday March 28, 2025.(AP)
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Israel’s Military Admits to Shooting at Ambulances in Gaza

 Palestinians buy clothes in a shop next to a destroyed apartment building in preparation for Eid al-Fitr celebrations at Al-Rimal neighborhood in the center of Gaza City Friday March 28, 2025.(AP)
Palestinians buy clothes in a shop next to a destroyed apartment building in preparation for Eid al-Fitr celebrations at Al-Rimal neighborhood in the center of Gaza City Friday March 28, 2025.(AP)

Israel’s military admitted Saturday it had fired on ambulances in the Gaza Strip after identifying them as “suspicious vehicles,” with Hamas condemning it as a “war crime” that killed at least one person.

The incident took place last Sunday in the Tal al-Sultan neighborhood in the southern city of Rafah, close to the Egyptian border.

Israeli troops launched an offensive there on March 20, two days after the army resumed aerial bombardments of Gaza following an almost two-month-long truce.

Israeli troops had “opened fire toward Hamas vehicles and eliminated several Hamas terrorists,” the military said in a statement to AFP.

“A few minutes afterward, additional vehicles advanced suspiciously toward the troops... The troops responded by firing toward the suspicious vehicles, eliminating a number of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists.”

The military did not say if there was fire coming from the vehicles.

It added that “after an initial inquiry, it was determined that some of the suspicious vehicles... were ambulances and fire trucks,” and condemned “the repeated use” by “terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip of ambulances for terrorist purposes.”

The day after the incident, Gaza’s Civil Defense agency said in a statement that it had not heard from a team of six rescuers from Tal al-Sultan who had been urgently dispatched to respond to deaths and injuries.

On Friday, it reported finding the body of the team leader and the rescue vehicles—an ambulance and a firefighting vehicle—and said a vehicle from the Palestine Red Crescent Society was also “reduced to a pile of scrap metal.”

Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, accused Israel of carrying out “a deliberate and brutal massacre against Civil Defense and Palestinian Red Crescent teams in the city of Rafah.”

“The targeted killing of rescue workers—who are protected under international humanitarian law—constitutes a flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions and a war crime,” he said.

Tom Fletcher, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said that since March 18, “Israeli airstrikes in densely populated areas have killed hundreds of children and other civilians.”

“Patients killed in their hospital beds. Ambulances shot at. First responders killed,” he said in a statement.

“If the basic principles of humanitarian law still count, the international community must act while it can to uphold them.”