Duhok police arrest man for killing ex-wife

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region –– Duhok police announced on Monday that they had arrested a man who confessed on Sunday to killing his ex-wife in Duhok province over the weekend.

Police in Domiz were called to War City apartments at 11pm on Sunday in relation to a murder, Hemin Sleman, the spokesperson for Duhok police, said in a video posted to Facebook. 

Sleman said the unnamed 22-year-old victim has divorced her husband two months ago due to “a family feud,” and was killed by her 35-year-old ex-husband, from Duhok’s Semel district, on Saturday.

“He has admitted to the crime, and the investigation is ongoing,” the spokesperson added.

Femicide and intimate partner violence is an ongoing issue in the Kurdistan Region. 

A 22-year-old woman was killed by her husband in Erbil in April.  After years of domestic violence, she separated from her husband in late 2020 and sought shelter at her family’s house and a woman’s shelter.

"Many women were killed in the name of honor killings in the past few months and I say this with all my respect, but there is no honor in honor killing," Tanya Gilly Khailany, the co-founder of SEED Foundation, told Rudaw the same month.

Women across Iraq and the Kurdistan Region are at heightened risk of domestic violence and gender-based violence as a result of the pandemic, according to a November report from UNFPA, which noted a marked rise in such violence. 

Gender-based violence has killed at least five women since the beginning of the year, according to statistics from the Kurdistan Region’s Directorate of Combatting Violence against Women.