When the State Hands Children to Their Killers: Horrific Crimes in Iraq Committed in the Name of Discipline

By: Benin Elias

Iraqi social media platforms were flooded with videos of a minor named Zahraa, sixteen years old, speaking about the murder of her mother and sister at the hands of her father’s wife. In the video published by the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, the devastated girl appeared visibly exhausted and sorrowful as she pleaded with the Iraqi judiciary to execute the two perpetrators.

Maasouma, 15, and her mother were murdered… “You are not a father. Why did you kill them I will never forgive you.”

The ministry’s page also posted videos showing Zahraa confronting her father and his wife at the crime scene where her sister Maasouma was killed. She asked him repeatedly: You are not a father. Why did you kill them I will never forgive you. Turning to her stepmother, she said: “Why did you kill my sister You could have called me and I would have come to take care of her.”

After security forces investigated the case, it became clear that the victim, Maasouma, born in 2020, had been brutally assaulted before her death. Her body was covered with bruises, bite marks, and signs of severe abuse. The crime took place in the Al Amil neighborhood on April 10 of this year. Details of the investigation were released in the past two days. The most shocking revelation was that Maasouma’s mother had been murdered by the same father in 2022, yet he remained free.

Masouma’s sister: “My mother was killed three years ago, and my father won custody of my sister only to kill her today!”

Zahraa recounts the murder of her mother three years earlier. She says she returned from school in 2022 to hear that her mother had died in the street and that her uncle took her to the hospital. What shocked her most was finding her mother in the morgue with a gunshot wound to the head. She adds that she was certain from the beginning that her father and his wife were responsible because her mother stayed at home and did not know anyone. “Who else could have entered and killed her?”

Zahraa’s father and stepmother were released eight months after the crime. Zahraa went to live with her maternal grandparents while the father was granted custody of little Maasouma. The child lived a harsh life filled with violence and in the end her abuser, her father, preferred killing her over handing her to Zahraa.

Zahraa tried every possible legal route to obtain custody of her sister but all attempts failed. She says that before the murder she begged her father many times to send her photos of Maasouma to check on her health yet he always delayed and made excuses that the child was asleep or that he was outside the house.

According to the father’s confession, Maasouma had been locked alone in an upstairs room, tied by her underwear, given only one meal a day, and eventually died from abuse and malnutrition. The father admitted beating Maasouma whenever he fought with his wife in order to please her, saying during interrogation that he hit the child to appease his wife.

Zahraa ends her testimony trembling, saying in Iraqi dialect that everyone feels sad but no one feels what is inside her. Her family has been destroyed. She lost her mother and sister and does not know the fate of her brothers.

In Bagdad, children are being killed in the name of discipline: Nargess, Moussa, and who will be next?

Maasouma is not the first victim, and sadly nothing suggests she will be the last. What fuels anger and heartbreak is that her case is not an exception. The same scenario keeps repeating under a system where violence is legally institutionalized and socially accepted.

In recent weeks Iraq was shaken by the murder of a ten-year-old girl named Nargess in Baghdad’s Al-Kifah area. She was tortured to death by her father and his wife. Her mother says that Nargess wanted to live with her, which angered the father. He prevented the mother from seeing her, hid the girl, changed their address, withdrew her from school to stop visits, and then killed her.

Nargess’s mother received a call from the hospital saying her daughter was ill, but she arrived to find a lifeless body covered in marks of brutal torture. She says anyone who saw her would be terrified by the sight. She explains that Nargess died hungry and thirsty. Her father had starved her, giving her only sips of water, locked her in an isolated room for four months, and beat her with electrical cables with the participation of his wife.

According to the mother, the abuse was driven by the child’s desire to return to her mother’s home. She adds that her ex-husband never allowed visits and hid the girl to prevent her from seeing her. At the time this report was prepared, the mother remained in severe psychological shock, fleeing repeatedly to unknown places. Neighbors deeply affected by the tragedy search for her constantly. Meanwhile, the state and institutions responsible for protecting women remain entirely absent.

Rising Rates of Child Killings. What Is the Connection to the Amendment of Article 57 of the Personal Status Law?

The Strategic Center for Human Rights in Iraq revealed that cases of violence against children have risen sharply during 2024–2025. The Ministry of Interior recorded fourteen thousand domestic violence complaints, most of which involved physical abuse. According to the center, 73% of the victims were girls, compared to 27% boys. Baghdad alone accounted for 31% of these crimes.

Human rights activist and member of the Iraqi Women’s Network, Suheila Al A’asam, says that the increase in violence is not new. Based on her field work she notes that there are even more horrific cases that never reach the media. Holding the authorities responsible, she criticizes the laws and their implementation, which return victims to their abusers in exchange for a written pledge. She describes these procedures as miserable and stresses the need for real measures to hold perpetrators accountable, along with legal plans and preventive procedures to protect children from violence.

She adds that the amendment of the Personal Status Law, Article 57, and the absence of accountability for violations of international treaties that Iraq has ratified, are additional factors contributing to the spread of such crimes. Iraq was among the first countries to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1989.

She continues that the situation is extremely alarming for children, who cannot file complaints out of fear of retaliation, social stigma, or the belief that filing a complaint is pointless since they are often returned to their abusers.

Moussa was not saved either. They returned him to his abusers, and he was killed
Among the painful examples of complicity by what is known as the Community Police, Al A’asam refers to the case of Moussa, eight years old, who was tortured and killed by his stepmother last year. Despite a complaint being filed, the Ministry of Interior returned the boy to his family, where he died days later, in a case similar to that of Nargess.
In Iraq, domestic violence cases are handled under Article (41–1) of Penal Code No. 111 of 1969, which permits the use of violence under the pretext of discipline within what is defined by religious, legal, or customary norms. The article states: There is no crime if the act involves the use of a right legally granted. The use of this right includes a husband disciplining his wife and parents, teachers, and those in similar positions disciplining minors within limits defined by religion, law, or custom.

A legal expert who preferred not to be named warns that this article is used as a loophole to escape punishment. He says these gaps in Iraqi law allow guardians to abuse their children under the guise of discipline, and the abuser or killer may walk away from the case like a hair pulled smoothly from dough, claiming unintentional killing.

Added to this is the fact that a domestic violence law has still not been passed. Its approval has been blocked by political groups and religious parties under the pretext of protecting family values.

A Generation in Danger

Dr Ikhlas Jabrin, a professor of psychology, warns of the consequences of this deliberate neglect on Iraqi society and on the present and future of the new generation in particular. She says that the future of Iraq is in danger because the growing cases of violence will produce a generation that does not believe in its own abilities. She stresses the danger of repeated exposure to violent scenes on the psychological, emotional, and moral development of children.

She explains that economic conditions, family breakdown, and the spread of drugs all contribute to the rise in violence. She also points to a horrifying phenomenon: parents filming themselves torturing their children and either posting the videos on social media or sending them to their former partners as a form of revenge.

Mothers afraid of another Nargess, Maasouma, or Moussa
Shahd, a mother from Baghdad, thirty three years old, recounts her terrifying experience in a trembling voice. She says she did not sleep for three days after seeing the photo of Nargess dead. She imagined that it was her own daughter, who was taken from her by her father two years ago, and she still does not know where she lives.

She adds that legal procedures are complicated and lawyer fees are extremely expensive, which increases the burden on abused women who are forced into silence and submission under a social system that imposes dependence on them in all its forms, including economic dependence.

Confirming the fear that haunts survivors who managed to break the cycle of violence through divorce, Shahd explains that her ex-husband was violent with her and their daughter throughout the marriage. This is his way of life, she says, expressing her fear that the tragedy of Nargess could be repeated with her own child.

Who protects Iraq’s children
Between Maasouma, Nargess, and Moussa, and thousands of unseen children, countless painful stories remain hidden, covered up by tribal customs and sanctioned by law under patriarchal pretexts.

This devastating reality intensifies the urgent need for deterrent laws, effective protection mechanisms, and real support for mothers. Laws and measures must be sincere and directed at protecting childhood, motherhood, and humanity, not at serving tribal norms and anti-woman mentalities that place children in the jaws of patriarchal revenge.

Domestic violence is no longer a family matter. It has become a social crisis that threatens the future of Iraq as a whole and demands urgent alarm to curb the rise in crime in a country where women struggle every day to secure the safety of their children.