Day: July 1, 2024

baghdad, iraq — Iraqi police announced Monday the arrest of three suspected members of a militant group accused of arson attacks in the country’s north. 

The announcement comes at a time of heightened tension in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, where the Turkish army is conducting operations against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is listed as a “terrorist” group by Ankara and several Western allies. 

The region is also scheduled to hold much-delayed elections in October. 

The fires in 2023 and 2024 struck markets and shopping centers in the cities of Kirkuk, Irbil and Dohuk, Iraqi interior ministry spokesperson Moqdad Miri said during a news conference, adding that the suspects made “confessions.” 

One suspect was arrested at the end of May and “chemical products” used to start fires were found in his vehicle, Miri said. 

“The entity responsible for execution … is the PKK organization, a banned organization,” he added. 

The objective was to “harm the commercial interests of a country with which they are in direct opposition,” as well as “to impact the security and economic situation” of the autonomous Kurdistan region, he added. 

In a statement, the PKK’s political bureau “rejected” what it said were “baseless allegations.” 

It called on “the Iraqi state and the ministry of the interior to act responsibly in the face of directives coming from Turkish intelligence” and to “identify the real perpetrators” of the fires. 

Strained ties  

The PKK, which has fought a decadeslong insurgency against the Turkish state, has a presence in northern Iraq, as does Turkey, which has operated from several dozen military bases there against the Kurdish group. 

Turkey’s military operations, which sometimes take place deep inside Iraqi territory, have frequently strained bilateral ties. 

During the joint conference, a senior official from Kurdistan’s interior ministry, Hemin Mirany, revealed the identity of two of the suspects, saying that one belonged to the local peshmerga armed forces. 

The other suspect was an “officer in the anti-terrorist services of Sulaymaniyah,” Kurdistan’s second city, Mirany said. 

The Kurdish official said the two men were “recruited” by the PKK and were “trained by fighters coming from Turkey and Syria in particular.” 

The three suspects were presented at the conference wearing yellow prison outfits, kneeling, blindfolded and handcuffed with their hands behind their backs. 

Officials in both Turkey and Irbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region, have accused the PKK of benefiting from support within the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), a major political party that controls the security services in Sulaymaniyah. 

Responding to a request for comment, a PUK spokesperson, Saadi Ahmed Pire, told AFP the anti-terrorism officer arrested had been “immediately removed” eight months ago when federal authorities first warned them that the individual had been accused. 

In March, following a visit by senior Turkish officials to Iraq, Baghdad quietly listed the PKK as a “banned organization” — though Ankara demands that the Iraqi government do more in the fight against the militant group.

(NewsNation) — A Palm Beach County judge Monday released grand jury records, which included hundreds of documents and audio recordings, from the 2006 investigation against Jeffrey Epstein. 

The records have remained under seal for 16 years. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an order to release the files by July 1, reported the Palm Beach Post, which sued for their release in 2019. 

Epstein, a millionaire known for associating with high-profile personalities, became the subject of a police investigation in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2005 after he was accused of paying a 14-year-old girl for sex. 

Once he was arrested, multiple underage girls, many of them high school students, came forward telling police that Epstein hired them to give sexual massages.

While Palm Beach police charged Epstein with multiple counts of unlawful sex with a minor in 2006, the state attorney at the time, Barry Krischer, made the unusual decision of sending the case to a grand jury.

The grand jury heard from only one accuser and indicted Epstein with one count of solicitation of prostitution. Accusations from other victims, many of whom were minors, are not reflected in the indictment.

Krischer’s office never spoke with any of the victims, according to state attorney documents, and once Epstein’s high-profile defense attorneys became involved, his office quit communicating regularly with police, reported the Palm Beach Post.

Questions have swirled for nearly two decades about why Epstein was charged with relatively minor offenses and why the case went to a grand jury.

Among the records released Monday was the testimony of an underage girl who described being allegedly assaulted by Epstein.

He was re-arrested in 2019 on sex trafficking charges in New York but was found dead in his cell by suicide a month after his arrest.

NewsNation’s Urja Sinha and Devan Markham contributed to this story.