An Iraqi Kurdish editor of a magazine that advocates relations between the Kurdistan region and Israel has been missing for more than 10 days, a journalist from the publication said on Wednesday.
Mawlud Afand, the editor-in-chief of the Israel-Kurd Institute’s magazine, has been missing since June 8, said Diyari Mohammed, a correspondent for the magazine in Sulaimaniyah, in the autonomous Kurdistan region of northern Iraq.
During a visit to Sulaimaniyah, Afand “went alone for an appointment… and disappeared,” Mohammed said.
A woman who spoke Persian answered Afand’s phone on June 13, but it has been switched off since then, Mohammed said, adding Afand’s colleagues have raised the possibility he was kidnapped by Iranian intelligence.
Mohammed said the president of the Israel-Kurd Institute, Dawood al-Baghistani, had been informed by the Kurdistan region’s government last year that Iran wanted the magazine closed, but that Kurdistan declined to do so.
Iran has alleged its arch-foe Israel was operating in Kurdistan, claims the region has rejected as “untrue.”
On May 5, Tehran’s consul in Arbil, Azim Hosseini, said Iran’s security agencies had found evidence that “Israelis are in Kurdistan, and they are working against Iran.”
And on April 21, Iranian MP Esmaeel Kosari told Al-Alam, an Iran-based Arabic-language news channel, that Kurdistan and Azerbaijan “should know that the presence of the Zionist regime on their soil will be harmful to them.”
The Kurdistan regional government responded by saying: “This is not the first time that Iranian officials are saying this without presenting evidence or reasons.”
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