Iraqi court mistakenly issues arrest warrant for 4-year-old boy

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A court in Iraq’s eastern Diyala province mistakenly issued an arrest warrant for a four-year-old boy in a verbal threats case, provincial police told Rudaw on Thursday, attributing the incident to a clerical error by an investigative judge.

“The judge mistakenly wrote four-year-old Karrar’s name as the person being complained against because his name appeared in the summons order before the judge, whereas the actual accused person was Karrar’s father, Fahd Sobhi,” said Brigadier General Haitham al-Shammari, spokesperson for the Diyala Police Command.

The story began with an incident that took place in Diyala’s provincial capital Baqubah on Wednesday, when a 13-year-old boy named Hadi Omar struck four-year-old Karrar Fahd with his motorcycle.

The teenager was arrested and later released on bail because he was a minor. After his release, the boy’s mother, Zeina Khalaf, filed a complaint claiming she had received threats over the incident. In her testimony, she referenced four-year-old Karrar.

An arrest warrant was mistakenly issued against the preschooler under Article 432 of the Iraqi Penal Code, which relates to verbal threats and carries a penalty of up to one year in prison and a fine.

Shammari told Rudaw that the police, acting as the executive authority on the ground, “received the court order and were responsible for carrying it out. After the order reached them, they realized that the wanted person was a four-year-old child.”

After authorities discovered that the arrest warrant had been issued against Karrar, Khalaf amended her statement, clarifying that she had intended to accuse the four-year-old’s father - not the child - of threatening her following the accident involving his son.

The order was subsequently corrected in accordance with legal procedures, though only after the incident sparked widespread reactions on Iraqi social media.