Top Iraqi court delays hearing on disputed Nineveh land

Shafaq News- Nineveh

Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court postponed until September 7 a hearing on a lawsuit challenging a Nineveh Provincial Council land decision after lawmakers who brought the case requested more time to respond to the council’s defense, legal adviser Humam Al-Salim told Shafaq News on Sunday.

The dispute concerns land where construction had been prohibited in Qaza Fakhra and Jliyokhan, two areas in the Nineveh Plains east of Mosul. Al-Salim, who attended on behalf of the Provincial Council chairman, said lawmakers Waad El-Kadu and Duraid Jameel appeared as plaintiffs, while the council chairman and Nineveh governor were represented as defendants.

The legal challenge follows a case brought before the Federal Supreme Court by Qusay Abbas, a lawmaker representing the Shabak community, an ethnic and religious minority concentrated in the Nineveh Plains, against the head of the Provincial Council.

The suit accuses the council of seeking to engineer demographic change in areas surrounding Mosul, including Qaza Fakhra and Jliyokhan, after it voted in June to authorize the Mosul municipality to subdivide and distribute residential plots and issue building permits in expansion zones.

Read more: Nineveh Council lifts building restrictions on Mosul outskirts