Participants are now facing arrest warrants, death threats and the loss of jobs. The conference sponsor was a little-known nonprofit group based in Brooklyn, New York, the Center for Peace Communications. Iraqi law makes it a crime to “promote Zionist principles” and lists the punishment as death. The main speaker at the conference, Sheikh Wissam al-Hardan, from Anbar, is now under Kurdish protection along with other conference attendees facing threats. Braude has said that he spoke with the US military about job prospects in Iraq shortly after the 2003 invasion.

Source: bd News24 September 30, 2021 05:48 UTC