Iraqi Kurdish journalist Omed Baroshky sentenced to 6 months in prison

Sulaymaniyah, January 31, 2025—The Committee to Protect Journalists urges Iraqi Kurdish authorities to release journalist Omed Baroshky after the Duhok criminal court on Thursday sentenced him to six months in prison on charges of defamation.

Baroshky’s lawyer, Revving Hruri, told CPJ via messaging app that the charges stem from a January 23, 2024 Facebook post in which Baroshky reported that political prisoner Mala Nazir had been kidnapped from the prison one day before his scheduled release.

In February, after Baroshky’s reporting was circulated widely in the local media, Zirka prison authorities sued the journalist for allegedly violating of Article 2 of the Misuse of Communication Devices law.

“We are deeply troubled by the sentencing of journalist Omed Baroshky over a Facebook post,” said Yeganeh Rezaian, CPJ’s interim MENA program coordinator, in Washington, D.C. “Iraqi Kurdish authorities must ensure that journalists are not criminalized for their reporting. We urge authorities to free Baroshky and allow him to continue his work without fear of retaliation.”

Hruri told CPJ that they presented the court with “multiple pieces of evidence proving that he is a journalist and should be tried under the press law, which does not allow imprisonment, but the court refused.”

Hruri said that while the court confirmed during the trial that Nazir had been transferred from the prison, “they alleged that Omed defamed the prison.”

CPJ contacted Aram Atrushi, the director of Zirka prison, for comment, but he declined to discuss the case.

Baroshky previously spent 18 months in jail from 2020 to 2022 under the same law over social media posts that criticized authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan. After his outlet Rast Media was raided and shut down in April 2023, he turned to Facebook as his main reporting platform.