ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A Kirkuk court on Sunday sentenced a Kurdish farmer to four months in prison over a land dispute with a settler, according to a representative of Kurdish farmers. The ruling comes amid ongoing land disputes in the province.
Kirkuk’s Daquq Court reviewed two cases against two Kurdish farmers. One of the cases concerned a complaint by a settler against a Kurdish farmer, Saman Raza, in the Sargaran subdistrict for allegedly preventing the settler from working on his land, while the land is registered in the name of the Kurdish farmer's grandfather, Mohammed Amin, who represents Kurdish farmers in Kirkuk, told Rudaw.
The second case was against Amin himself. The case has been filed by the Kirkuk Operations Command against Amin, who on February 17 had an altercation with the Iraqi army in the area over preventing the cultivation of his land.
"Regarding my case, this is the third court session where the complainant's representative does not appear before the court under the pretext that the court notice has not reached him to attend. The judge of that case decided to withdraw from the case and request the Kirkuk Court of Appeal to appoint another judge, which is scheduled to be resolved on October 5," he said.
The disputed lands were affected by Saddam Hussein’s Arabization program, under which Kurdish-owned lands were seized and reassigned to Arab families.
In 1975, the Iraqi government declared several Kurdish villages in Kirkuk as prohibited oil zones and stripped their residents of land rights. By 1977, through Baath Supreme Revolutionary Court Decree No. 949, those lands were redistributed to Arab settlers.
After the fall of the Baath regime in 2003, Iraq adopted Article 140 of the constitution, aimed at reversing such demographic changes. However, implementation has stalled for years.
In January, Iraq’s parliament passed a land restitution law to return property confiscated from Kurds and Turkmen during the Baath era. The legislation covers approximately 300,000 dunams (around 750 square kilometers) in Kirkuk and other disputed areas, and follows a July 2023 Council of Ministers decision to revoke Baath-era decrees.
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