Man sentenced to death in Iraq’s Najaf for killing wife

Shafaq News– Najaf

A criminal court in Najaf has sentenced a man to death after convicting him of killing his wife by setting her on fire, a source told Shafaq News on Thursday.

The source said the man confessed to the crime during the investigation, citing family disputes as his motive.

Najaf authorities did not issue an immediate public statement beyond the court ruling.

The verdict comes years after an earlier high-profile incident in Najaf in which a young woman was severely burned in a domestic assault, a case that sparked widespread public anger and advocacy campaigns and renewed calls for stronger protections for women.

Iraq has recorded a sharp surge in domestic violence in recent years, with nearly 14,000 cases reported in the first half of 2024 alone, according to the Strategic Center for Human Rights, following 18,436 in 2023 and 21,595 in 2022, pushing the three-year total before 2025 to above 53,000.

Rights groups, including Human Rights Watch (HRW), have repeatedly warned that such cases highlight gaps in Iraq’s legal framework on domestic violence. HRW has noted that a draft domestic violence law has remained stalled in parliament for years, while only the Kurdistan Region has enacted specific legislation addressing domestic abuse.

Globally, data referenced by the World Health Organization (WHO) found that nearly 840 million women worldwide have experienced intimate partner or sexual violence, a crisis that has seen almost no progress in two decades.

Read more: From love to bloodshed: Iraq’s family violence epidemic