Iraq plans to send a security delegation to Lebanon to support the investigation into the killing of former Iraqi MP Ahmed al-Alwani, whose body was found in an apartment in Beirut.
An Iraqi security official said on Wednesday 11 November that a specialised team would travel to Lebanon to follow the case with the country’s security agencies. Iraqi security sources have also described plans for officials and judicial investigators to take part in the inquiry.
The announcement concerns a proposed deployment. It has not been established when the team will arrive or what specific role its members will have alongside Lebanese investigators.
Al-Alwani, who represented Iraq’s western Anbar province in parliament, had travelled to Lebanon from Erbil on 5 November. His relatives lost contact with him, and his body was found in the Tariq al-Jdideh area of Beirut.
Lebanon’s top prosecutor, Judge Ahmad Rami al-Hajj, is overseeing the initial investigation by the Information Branch of the Internal Security Forces. The circumstances of the death and the people responsible remain under investigation.
A Lebanese judicial official has said investigators asked Syria to arrest and hand over two Syrian nationals suspected of involvement. That account describes an investigative request, not a finding of guilt. No motive has been established.
Iraq’s security spokesman, Lieutenant General Saad Maan, said on Thursday that the Lebanese owner of the apartment had been detained as a precaution because he was expected to hold identification documents for its tenants. The spokesman did not say that the owner had been charged with the killing. His detention does not establish that he was involved.
Accounts of his last movements
Maan said Al-Alwani travelled by taxi from the airport to a hotel and left less than an hour after checking in. According to the spokesman, hotel staff told investigators that the people who left with him spoke with Syrian accents. Maan said Al-Alwani later called his family from an apartment in Tariq al-Jdideh.
Al-Alwani’s media office has given a different account, saying he did not stay at a hotel on the day he arrived. The office has asked the authorities to examine surveillance footage from the airport, the apartment building and surrounding roads. It has also cautioned that footage alone does not establish when he was killed.
Relatives identified the body on Wednesday, Maan said. He added that Al-Alwani’s son had provided a sample for DNA testing and that the embassy and security agencies were awaiting the result before the body could be sent to Iraq. That was the position the spokesman described on Thursday.
Iraq’s President Nazar Amedi raised the case with Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam during a meeting in Antalya on Wednesday. The Iraqi presidency said Amedi called for an urgent investigation to establish what happened and identify those responsible.
Al-Alwani’s office has also called for a transparent investigation and cooperation between Iraqi and Lebanese authorities. The Iraqi security authorities have urged people to wait for official findings and warned against using the case to inflame sectarian tensions.
Political career and imprisonment
Al-Alwani was a Sunni politician who represented Anbar and chaired the Iraqi parliament’s economic committee. He was a prominent supporter of protests in 2012 and 2013 against the government of then prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. Protesters accused the government of marginalising Sunni communities.
Iraqi security forces arrested him during a raid on his home in Ramadi in December 2013. His brother and several other people were killed during the operation. Al-Alwani was sentenced to death in 2014 and spent more than a decade in detention.
The Inter-Parliamentary Union, an organisation of national parliaments that had pressed for his release, said he was acquitted and freed on 23 April 2025. It said the family of a victim of the raid had withdrawn a complaint and accepted compensation, enabling him to benefit from Iraq’s amnesty law.
His death has prompted calls for answers in both countries. The Lebanese investigation is continuing, while the planned Iraqi delegation is intended to support follow-up with the Lebanese authorities. The identities and responsibility of anyone involved remain matters for that investigation.
