The high incidence of femicide in Basra governorate due to “honor washing” raises concern in Iraqi society, as these crimes threaten women’s lives and raise fear among them. Recently, security forces found a severed body.

A report broadcast on Monday by Al-Hurra TV indicates that three of the six Iraqi women were found murdered in the southern Basra governorate during the past two months. They are victims of what is known as “honor killings,” while the report revealed that one of them had found her body “dismembered”.

The report said that honor killings are on the increase, which raises the concern of many sectors of society, especially those defending human rights and women.

Many of the victims were killed due to the discovery of messages, calls, or pictures on their phones that were evidence of their having an affair, according to the report.

A member of the Basra Senate, Raed Al-Faraiji, said that “the clans sometimes rely on phone calls or messages based on which they decide to kill women out of honor,” in “opposition to the Qur’an, which requires the presence of four witnesses who see the incident,” he says.

According to judicial experts, “Iraqi law has made society underestimate the punishment for honor crimes.”

The legal expert, Yusef Yaqoub, said that “honor killings have a reduced sentence,” according to his belief, adding, “It will be from six months to a year or two years in prison, and the judge can reduce the sentence or release a suspended sentence.”

Yaqoub told Al-Hurra TV that “society underestimated this punishment.” Al-Saadi said that “a girl was expelled from her family and threatened with death several times to accuse her of an honor case after a mistake by a doctor who told her family that she was not a virgin,” adding that a forensic medicine council examined the girl. He confirmed the doctor’s wrong diagnosis. Al-Saadi, who hosted the “Al-Hurra” newsletter, relayed a story about an employee in the Iraqi forensic medicine department who told her that “many girls whose bodies are brought to the morgue after they were killed on the grounds of honor are discovered during the autopsy that they are virgins.”

According to Al-Saadi, “Iraqi law reduces the penalty only if the crime is immediate at the moment of the occurrence of the act of dishonor, and the reduction falls if the occurrence of the offending act is followed by a short interval of time.”

was