Iraqi man kills wife, reports her missing

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A man in the southern Iraqi province of Diwaniyah killed his wife earlier this month and then reported her missing to the police. Officers grew suspicious of his account, and their investigation later revealed that he was the murderer, the police said on Sunday.

“After a man filed a complaint about his wife's disappearance, we formed an investigation team, and after 13 days of surveillance and information gathering, we became suspicious of the husband,” Najah Mahmoud, director of Diwaniyah police, told Rudaw. 

He added that following the investigation and examination of the evidence, the husband confessed to his crime and said he killed his wife due to family disputes. 

The man took his wife to a distant location on the pretext of resolving their disputes but killed her there with a pistol. The 40-year-old woman is survived by six children, according to Mahmoud. 

Iraq suffers from high rates of gender-based violence, including sexual violence, domestic violence, so-called honor violence, child marriage, and female genital mutilation. Countless incidents of abuse go unreported on a yearly basis due to the stigma of linking such cases to “family honor” by the society’s conservative-majority population.

Gashaw Khalid contributed to this article from Erbil, Kurdistan Region.