The Iraqi President, Barham Salih, presented, on Wednesday, a new draft sanctions law, the first in fifty years, and said that it aims “to modernize the legal system and keep pace with developments, and to place Iraq in the ranks of countries that are committed to international law.”
Salih presented the law, which was prepared by the Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council, to Parliament in a meeting attended by the First Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Hassan Al-Kaabi, the President of the Iraqi Bar Association and the head of the Jurists Union in Iraq, experts and legal scholars, and a group of law professors.
Saleh said that the new draft law is the most comprehensive amendment in 50 years to the Iraqi Penal Code of 1969, and the amendments made to it by the “dissolved Revolutionary Command Council” and orders issued by the “Coalition Provisional Authority.”
The President added that “Iraq’s legal system and the penal code in particular remained in a framework that did not keep pace with the major transformations that occurred in Iraq”
and added that Among the most prominent features of the new law is the establishment of deterrent punitive provisions to combat financial corruption crimes and administrative law, preventing impunity, obligating embezzlers to return funds, criminalizing acts and tightening penalties for crimes committed against the national economy, and the law pays great attention to protecting the family and criminalizing acts committed against it. The new law has taken into account all international conventions and treaties, especially those ratified by Iraq as part of national law and through consultation with the United Nations and the Red Cross, and it will have positive consequences that place Iraq in the ranks of countries committed to international law and international standards related to crime, punishment, personal freedoms, and the abuses that It takes place in society.
The Iraqi Penal Code is considered one of the most important laws in force in the country, but it contains texts written under previous dictatorial regimes, a number of which criminalize practices that could fall under the name of freedom of expression.
The draft law needs the approval of the Iraqi Council of Representatives by a majority, before it can be passed and the old law repealed.
