Yesterday, Wednesday, an American judge refused to extradite an Iraqi refugee named Omar Abdul Sattar Amin to his country, as Baghdad accuses him of being involved in a murder in favor of ISIS, and the judge justified the refusal by saying that the evidence from his phone data shows that he was in Turkey at the time of the killing.

Since 2018, the US Department of Justice has been trying to return the wanted person to Iraq, under a treaty with Baghdad.

Amin fled to Turkey in 2012, and obtained refugee status in the United States as a victim of terrorism in June 2014, but prosecutors said that he returned to Iraq in the same month with the aim of killing a policeman in the town of Rawa in Anbar Governorate, in western Iraq, after she fell in The hand of the Islamic State, and after 5 months he returned to the United States to be resettled as a refugee.

US judge Edmund Brennan ordered Amin's release, stressing that there is no appeal against the ruling.

Benjamin Galloway, a lawyer for Amin, hoped that the government would realize that there is no case against his client, and therefore there is no sense in trying an innocent man or prosecuting him more than that.

Earlier court reports stated that the FBI's Joint Counterterrorism Task Force had investigated Amin since 2016, and said the division had independently confirmed his involvement in the crime.

Despite this, Amin managed to pass a polygraph test, and his immigration-related entry papers showed that he was in Turkey during the killing.

For its part, the Iraqi authorities say that Amin was one of a group in a convoy of 4 cars belonging to ISIS, which opened fire on the house of the police officer in Rawa Ihsan Abdul Hafeez Jassem and killed him, adding that Amin killed Jassim with a bullet in the chest.

According to Iraqi documents submitted to the US Federal Court, Amin would have faced execution had he been returned to Iraq.

A claim for extradition

In another case, prosecutors in the US state of Arizona demanded approval to hand over a man of Iraqi origin to the judicial authorities in Baghdad, for his participation in the killing of two police officers 15 years ago in Fallujah (west of Baghdad).

In their request for the judge to hand over the man, prosecutors said that the evidence presented by the Iraqi authorities against Ali Yusef Ahmed al-Nuri was sufficient.

Prosecutors said that witnesses saw al-Nuri at the crime scene in 2006, and that another person claimed that he was part of al-Qaeda and had implicated him.

On the other hand, Al-Nouri's lawyers asked the judge not to extradite their client, claiming that the provisions of the US-Iraqi treaty prohibit extradition for crimes of a political nature.

Al-Nouri came to the United States in 2009, and obtained American citizenship in 2015, and a hearing for his extradition has been scheduled to take place in Phoenix on May 25.

Al-Nouri denied the accusations against him, his involvement in the killing, or that he belonged to Al-Qaeda.