Shilan..The Massacre that shook the Kurdish Society
Shafaq news/ As soon as the scent of blood reeked from the carnage of an entire Kurdish family in western Baghdad; one of the capital’s most prestigious areas, near foreign embassies where the security surveillance is tight, it resonated in Kurdistan like wildfire.
The incident took place on Tuesday, 15/09/2020 when masked gunmen stormed into the pharmacist Dr. Shilan Dara Raouf’s house and killed her and her parents inside their home in Al-Mansour neighborhood.
Shilan, in her early twenties, volunteered as a paramedic to provide medical assistance to the injured protestors in Baghdad; she used to work in the Medical City hospital’s department of Oncology.
The horrific crime that shook Baghdad’s society, provoked a reaction among the Kurdish media and trended on social media immediately.
"A Kurdish family was sentenced to the most brutal and inhuman crime in Baghdad, the capital of free democratic Iraq", tweeted Tafika Omar, the director-general of Kurdistan’s Human Rights Commission, "Shame on the gangs of murder and crimes". Omar called on the Iraqi government to take the necessary legal measures against these criminals as soon as possible and prosecute them to receive their just punishment for this horrific crime.
"The criminal gangs in Baghdad killed my sister, Alia, and her only daughter, Dr. Shilan", said Shilan's uncle.
Shafaq News agency investigated the crime. According to a security official, Shilan’s was decapitated and her body was bruised all over, which indicates that she had resisted and fought the perpetrator; Shilan’s parents were stabbed with sharp instruments in different parts of their bodies.
The security official also confirmed that the security authorities had preliminary information about the involvement of a relative of Shilan’s family in the crime.
In a statement, the Department of Religious and Charitable Institutions mourned Shilan’s mother, Alia Rashid Najem, a former expert employee in the department.
The department also stated that Alia Najem took the position of director of planning and follow-up department and the position of director of the mosques division in the department of institutions. She also served in the Sunni Endowment Office for more than forty years with the utmost sincerity and integrity and was one of the competent employees who provided great services until her retirement two years ago.
On the political front, Deputy Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament Bashir Khalil Al-Haddad condemned the incident, calling it an “atrocious crime”.
Kurdistan’s Democratic Party (KDP) bloc in the Iraqi parliament also condemned the crime and called on the security services to maintain the public security and the safety of citizens from such acts, which it described as nefarious and aimed at the people, security and the nation.
For its part, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) bloc in the Iraqi parliament called on the prime minister, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces to intervene personally and bring the murderers to justice.
