Shafaq News- Erbil

Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani on Tuesday commemorated Kurdish activist Leyla Qasim and her companions, executed 52 years ago under Iraq’s former Baath regime, describing her as a symbol of “freedom and dignity.”

In a statement, Barzani highlighted Qasim’s role as “a beacon of awareness and leadership” for Kurdish women. He said Qasim’s journey —from her hometown of Khanaqin to the University of Baghdad and eventually the prisons of the Baath regime— remains deeply rooted in Kurdish collective memory “as a lesson in self-sacrifice, steadfastness, and patriotism.”

Qasim, a Feyli Kurdish political activist born in Khanaqin in 1952, joined the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in the early 1970s and began her university studies in sociology at the University of Baghdad in 1971. Iraqi authorities arrested her on April 29, 1974, before executing her weeks later alongside several companions.