Colonel Abdullah Ali, of the Baghdad police, told the EFE news agency that the attacker approached the victim’s vehicle on a motorbike and shot the influencer with a nine millimeter pistol.
A friend of the “tiktoker”, who was in the car, was also injured.
The source indicated that the killer “escaped after committing the crime” and that the Iraqi Ministry of Interior formed an investigation team to identify the attacker and discover his motivation.
Ghufran Mahdi Sawadi, known on the social network TikTok as Um Fahd, gained hundreds of thousands of followers on the application, where she published videos dancing to Iraqi songs.
In February 2023, a Baghdad court sentenced her to six months in prison for “publishing several videos that included content and statements against public morality” and that the sentence was intended to “achieve general deterrence” to prevent the creation of content that Iraqi authorities considered inappropriate.
According to Iraqi media, Um Fahd’s murder took place days after the “tiktoker” had a open dispute with famous blogger Dalia Naemwho threatened to expose the sexual relations that the victim had with senior officials of the Government of Iraq, a situation that ended up causing a series of dismissals of employees from the Ministries of Interior and Defense.
In 2018, Iraqi influencer Tara Fares, 22, was also shot dead in Baghdad during a wave of femicides in the country.
In 2023, the Iraqi Government launched the “Baligh” campaign, a report in Arabic, to encourage citizens to report any content on social media that was “not consistent with public morality”, which has led to the persecution of several influencers, from agreement with human rights organizations.
