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It took less than 46 seconds for the helmeted assassin to pull over his motorcycle, walk to the driver\u2019s side of the S.U.V., yank open the door and fire his handgun four times, killing one of Iraq\u2019s most prominent TikTok personalities, a 30-year-old woman whose name on social media was Um Fahad.<\/p>\n
The security camera footage of the killing in front of a Baghdad home on Friday evening is startlingly explicit but sheds little light on either the killer\u2019s identity or the reason Um Fahad was targeted. The Iraqi Interior Ministry, which released the video, said it had formed a committee to investigate her death.<\/p>\n
The victim, whose real name was Ghufran Mahdi Sawadi, had become popular on social media sites, especially TikTok<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>, where her videos showed her wearing tight or revealing clothing, or singing and cuddling her young son. They won her some 460,000 followers, but also drew the ire of conservatives in Iraqi society and in the government.<\/p>\n At one point, officials ordered Ms. Sawadi jailed for 90 days, reprimanding her for a post that showed her dancing at her 6-year old son\u2019s birthday party.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n At her sparsely attended funeral, her brother, Ameer Mehdi Sawadi, said he had little faith that her killer would be caught.<\/p>\n \u201cI can name many innocents who have been killed,\u201d Mr. Sawadi said. \u201cHave you heard anything about their case? Did they find the killer? No.\u201d<\/p>\n Given his sister\u2019s prominence, the government might be expected to take action, but no official has come to see him since her death, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cNo one sat down with me and interrogated me,\u201d Mr. Sawadi said. \u201cI only told them that she was my sister, and I gave the authorities my name, and that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Sawadi\u2019s killing was the third in less than a year in Iraq of a young social media personality.<\/p>\n The killings appear to have been an outgrowth of an Iraqi clampdown on criticism of the government and on the public display of behaviors regarded as secular and Western, according to human rights groups<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The stricter social media regulations came in the wake of <\/span>youth uprisings that began in 2019 and challenged corruption in the Iraqi government and the influence of Iran. Today, the Iraqi government is dominated by parties with links to Iran, and many have a strong religious orientation.<\/p>\n The most recent addition to the list of prohibited activities was contained in legislation approved by the Parliament over the weekend. The country\u2019s anti-prostitution law now targets gay, bisexual and transgender Iraqis, making it a crime to have homosexual relations, punishable by 10 to 15 years in prison. Assisting in gender transition treatment would also be a crime.<\/p>\n The Parliament\u2019s acting speaker, Mohsen al-Mandalawi, described the law as \u201ca necessary step to protect the value structure of society, and in the higher interest of protecting our children from calls to immorality and homosexuality that are now invading countries.\u201d<\/p>\n The new law was sharply criticized<\/a> by Foreign Minister David Cameron of Britain and by a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, Matthew Miller, who said that<\/a> \u201climiting the rights of certain individuals in a society undermines the rights of all.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Miller also said that the newly amended law could be used \u201cto hamper free speech and expression and inhibit the operations of NGOs across Iraq.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ms. Sawadi was jailed after running afoul of an expanded definition of laws in the Iraqi penal code aimed at speech viewed as harming public order and morality.<\/p>\n In 2023, the Interior Ministry issued new regulations restricting social media content<\/a> deemed \u201cindecent\u201d or \u201cimmoral.\u201d Ms. Sawadi was one of a handful of social media influencers tried and sentenced for violating the regulations. She told The New York Times<\/a> then that she could not understand what she was being punished for.<\/p>\n \u201cThe judge asked me why I was dancing and showing part of my breast,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n In September, in a killing that was also caught on a surveillance camera, an assassin using a gun with a silencer shot another TikTok personality, Noor Alsaffar, 23, a man who posted videos of himself wearing women\u2019s clothes and makeup. The killer has not been caught.<\/p>\n And about two months ago, a transgender social media personality known as Simsim was stabbed to death in Diwaniyah, a city in southern Iraq. A suspect has been arrested in that case and remains in custody.<\/p>\n Women\u2019s rights activists and researchers say they are distressed at the impunity and the apparent lack of interest by the police and government leaders in women\u2019s sense of safety.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe streets of Baghdad are filled with surveillance cameras, and it is not difficult to find the criminals,\u201d said Fatin al-Hilfi, a former member of Iraq\u2019s Human Rights Commission. \u201cIn neighboring countries, the police can find the criminals within hours.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. al-Hilfi said she worried that critics of Ms. Sawadi were too ready to move on and reluctant to see the larger implications if her death goes unsolved.<\/p>\n \u201cHow can it be that here it is so easy to commit such an attack?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n Falih Hassan and Jaafar Thamer contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n