The Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDP-Iran) on Saturday said one of its senior officials was found dead in a hotel room in Erbil, two days after he went missing.
Mousa Babakhani, a member of the party's central committee, "was assassinated at the hands of the Islamic Republic in Erbil," the party's leadership announced.
The statement added that Babakhani's body showed "serious marks of torture," claiming he was "kidnapped by two Iranians on Thursday."
Kurdistan's internal security forces, Asayish, confirmed that the body belonged to Babakhani and that an investigation is underway to determine the circumstances of his death.
The Guli Sulaimani hotel management reported the murder to the security forces, noting that an investigation team arrived at the scene immediately.
The assassination of Babakhani comes two days after the Kurdish President, Nechirvan Barzani, met the new Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, amid controversy about raising the Kurdistan Region's flag during the welcoming ceremony at Tehran Airport.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry said that raising the flag was a "mistake" in the protocol.
Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said that raising the flag upon the arrival of the KRG President was a "mistake by the welcoming executive team stationed at the airport."
"Iran has always respected the territorial unity and territorial integrity of Iraq and has an unchangeable policy in this regard," he added.
Iraqi Foreign Ministry did not comment on the incident, given that the participating Iraqi delegations were at a presidential, not a ministerial level, a source at the Foreign Ministry told Asharq Al-Awsat.
However, the head of the Political Thinking Center, Ihsan al-Shammari, believes that Tehran deliberately placed the region's flag instead of the Iraqi one.
Shammari told Asharq Al-Awsat that Iran has a state and institutions, and it is unlikely that it made a protocol error.
He believes that Iran aims for rapprochement with the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which maintains good relations with the US.
Tehran fears protests might erupt in Kurdish regions, similar to what happened in the Ahwaz, and this may come within the framework of a new policy launched by the new president, Shammari noted.
Shammari believes that deliberately raising the flag of Kurdistan is a great embarrassment to the federal government in Baghdad and is a form of violation of Iraq's sovereignty.
