An Iraqi activist active in anti-power demonstrations (and his Iranian godfather) was assassinated on Sunday evening, 8 December, in front of his home in the holy Shia city of Kerbala, an AFP reported to AFP. neighbors.

CCTV footage from AFP shows 53-year-old father, Fahem al-Taï, returning home with two friends on a motorcycle in the evening. Just as he gets off, another moped approaches. The rear passenger takes out a pistol visibly equipped with a silencer and fires at least two times at the militant, less than two meters away from him, while the moped driver also takes out a weapon.

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Fahem al-Taï was murdered in a neighborhood "normally very secure because [...] near the sanctuaries, near a police station and the Provincial Council", assures his neighbor.

His two friends tried to continue on their two-wheelers, but were quickly chased by a white car and two motorcycle shooters, reports a close of one of the two men to AFP. "One of them was hit by a shot in the back," he says.

More than 450 people killed since 1 October

Since the beginning, on October 1, of an unprecedented movement demanding "the fall of the regime" in Iraq, more than 450 people have been killed and 20,000 others wounded in violence and demonstrations in Baghdad and in the southern Shiite of the country .

Among them are several militants, found dead in obscure conditions in different provinces of Iraq. The latest, 19-year-old Zahra Ali, was found a week ago by her family, her lifeless and tortured body, a few hours after her abduction.

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Similarly, on Friday, relatives of Zeid al-Khafaji, a 22-year-old photographer known in Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the Baghdad protest, said he was abducted outside his door when he arrived home at dawn. since Tahrir.

Dozens of activists have also been detained more or less briefly by armed men and in uniforms that the state assures it has not been able to identify for more than two months.

Responding to this campaign of intimidation on his Facebook page, Fahem al-Taï had written the day before his death: "We will win and our country will return to us, in spite of you". "Despite the pain, we will smile, despite you and your rotten political parties."

With AFP

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