On 30 November, Iraq’s Kataeb Hezbollah (KH) movement disputed details of a special investigative committee report tasked to probe the drone attack on the residence of Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi on 7 November.
The movement said in its statement that the alleged assassination attempt was a fabricated operation by the country’s security forces. Contrary to the report presented by Iraqi national security adviser Qasim al-Araji, KH added that there is no concrete evidence indicating that Kadhimi was at his residence during the attack.
KH pointed out that the video evidence provided by the security services only shows footage captured by external cameras 10 seconds before the attack. The group also questioned why the footage captured by the six cameras inside Kadhimi’s residence at the time of the attack has not been made available.
In addition, KH has raised concerns about the absence of any radar images taken by US planes that were monitoring the fortified Green Zone during the incident. The movement further questions the lack of testimonies collected from either Kadhimi’s direct neighbors or from the first responders to attend the incident.
On 29 November, officials announced that a group of investigators were imprisoned for allegedly destroying one of the drones without first lifting fingerprints off it. KH is also demanding that the government release members of the forensic team that investigated the attack and allow them to publicly announce their findings.
The committee that investigated the incident was headed by Araji and other senior members of the Iraq security establishment, including Army Chief of Staff General Abdul Amir Yarallah, deputy commander of the Joint Operations Command General Abdul Amir al-Shammari, head of the National Security Service Hamid al-Shatri, deputy of the intelligence service Majid al-Dulaimi and Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein.
A few hours after the drone attack and before any substantive investigations were conducted, Iraqi authorities claimed that the attack was carried out by Iran-backed resistance forces, a claim that was strongly rejected by Tehran.
The commander of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force, Ismail Qaani, even travelled to Baghdad just hours after the alleged attack to offer assistance in the investigation, reduce tensions between resistance groups and Kadhimi, and quell any attempts to hold Iran responsible.
The alleged drone attack that left no casualties came a few days after security forces opened fire on demonstrators who had gathered at the gates of the Green Zone to protest against the results of the 10 October parliamentary polls.