On 26 March a criminal court in the Kurdish-controlled city of Arbil retried Kamal Sayid Qadir, aged 48, Austrian national, writer, and sentenced him to 18 months’ imprisonment for “defamation”. The charge arose from articles he had written which were published on the internet. It was claimed that these articles strongly criticized the leadership of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), one of two parties holding power in the Kurdish-dominated region.
