An Iraqi judge has issued a warrant for the arrest of President Donald Trump over the deaths of leading Iranian and Iraqi military officials in an airstrike last year at Baghdad International Airport.
Such a crime could be considered eligible for capital punishment under Iraq’s criminal code, though such extradition and sentence are extremely unlikely.
Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council announced Thursday that a judge with the Rusafa Investigation Court, the judicial body entrusted with the year-long probe, “decided to issue an arrest warrant against the outgoing President of the United States Donald Trump in accordance with the provisions of Article 406 of the Iraqi Penal Code” over the killing of Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces deputy commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and the designated target of the U.S. strike, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Quds Force commander Major General Qassem Soleimani, along with others at the scene.
Article 406 falls under the “Murder” section of Iraq’s Penal Code, dealing specifically with most grave cases of homicide, ones that are “punishable by death.”
The code dates back to 1969 but has been amended since the 2003 U.S. invasion that overthrew then-President Saddam Hussein, who was executed in 2006 for crimes against humanity, a charge established outside of Iraq’s criminal code by a special tribunal under the new U.S.-installed government.
For Trump, evidence for his role in Muhandis’ death was based on statements gathered by Muhandis’ family and companies, according to the statement, which said that “investigation procedures will continue to discover the other participants in the implementation of this crime, whether they are Iraqis or foreigners.”
Muhandis oversaw the Popular Mobilization Forces, a collective of largely Shiite Muslim militias that rose up in response to the rise of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS). The collective was officially integrated into the Iraqi armed forces in 2018, though many organizations have close ties to neighboring Iran.