Tragic End for Iraqi Influencer Om Fahad

Vibrant, smiling, chubby, wearing bright clothes: this is how she appeared in the videos shared last week where she recorded herself in front of a mirror and while driving her SUV. Each video viewed hundreds of times on TikTok. Of Om Fahad, real name Ghufran Sawadi, the Iraqi influencer with half a million followers will remain joyful images, despite on Friday evening an unknown person shot her at point-blank range killing her while she was sitting in her car in front of her house, in the Zayouna neighborhood of Baghdad. Surveillance camera footage captured the attack: the assailant arrived alone on a motorcycle, wearing dark clothes and a helmet, got off, walked up to her black car, and fired. According to anonymous security sources, he pretended to be a food delivery rider. Another woman was also injured in the attack, reported the US agency Al Hurra. After the murder, the Iraqi Ministry of Interior declared that it had established a team of specialized investigators to probe into the circumstances of the murder. Who Was Om Fahad Om Fahad was successful on social media, known for sharing videos of herself dancing to Iraqi pop music wearing tight clothes, performances that garnered more than a million views. But all that fame in a society where civil liberties for women remain limited evidently did not find such broad consensus. In February 2023, the famous TikToker was sentenced to six months in prison by a court that had determined that her videos contained “indecent speeches that undermined public decency and morality”. The verdict came just a month after the Baghdad Ministry of Interior had launched a committee to uncover “obscene and degrading” content posted online by influencers like Om Fahad, in the declared attempt to safeguard “the morals and family traditions” of the Iraqi society. The ministry had also created an online platform where users were encouraged to report content for removal. At the time, authorities claimed that the public had welcomed the platform and that tens of thousands of reports had been registered by the public. But last year, the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, based in Geneva, declared that there was no reason to criminalize Om Fahad and that her content did not exceed the limits of her rights to freedom of opinion, expression, or publication. Recently, public curiosity was piqued by a feud between influencers: on one side Om Fahad, on the other her colleague Dalia Naeem, known as the Iraqi Barbie due to her numerous plastic surgery procedures, who had threatened to expose an alleged relationship of Ghufran with high-ranking Iraqi officials. Precedents The murder of Om Fahad is not the first of an influencer in Iraq. Last year in September, Noor Alsaffar, a 23-year-old TikToker followed on social media by hundreds of thousands, was shot dead. Five years earlier, in 2018, Tara Fares, a 22-year-old model, fell under the killers' bullets. In the country, the practice of honor killing continues to be widespread: the last one in January when the 22-year-old YouTube star Tiba al-Ali was strangled by her father.