FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION – MEDIA WORKERS Journalists worked in a dangerous and at times deadly environment, and reported physical assaults, abduction, intimidation, harassment and death threats for covering topics deemed sensitive, including corruption and militia abuses. Media workers Saif Talal and Hassan alAnbaki from the al-Sharkia TV channel were shot dead on 12 January in northwestern Diyala while returning from covering a suicide bombing in Muqdadiya and revenge attacks by militias targeting Sunni Arabs. The channel accused unidentified militiamen, but the authorities failed to adequately investigate the killing of the media workers. In April, the Iraqi Communications and Media Commission shut down al-Jazeera’s Baghdad bureau, accusing the channel of “incit[ing] sectarianism and violence”. In March, the authorities closed the Baghdadia TV Channel’s offices in Iraq purportedly for operating illegally without a licence. The channel had published articles on government corruption and pro-reform protests, and had been subjected to several closures in recent years. KURDISTAN REGION OF IRAQ Media workers, activists and politicians critical of the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) faced harassment and threats and some were expelled from Erbil governorate. No progress was made in conducting investigations into the killings in previous years of journalists and other perceived critics and opponents of the Kurdish authorities. On 13 August, relatives collected the body of Wedad Hussein Ali, a journalist who worked for a publication seen as supporting the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK). The body bore injuries indicating that he had been tortured, including deep lacerations to the head. Witnesses told his family that he had been found alive earlier that day in a village west of Dohuk after unidentified men seized him from the street at gunpoint. His family Amnesty International Report 2016/17 and co-workers reported that he was previously questioned by the Asayish (security forces) in Dohuk and had received death threats. The authorities announced an investigation two days after his killing but had disclosed no outcome by the end of the year. Asayish and other Kurdish security forces detained thousands of terrorism suspects, mainly Sunni Arab men and boys, amid severe delays in referring them to the judiciary, denial of family visits for prolonged periods of time, and other breaches of due process. In October, the KRG authorities said that the Asayish Ghishti (General Security Agency) and the Asayish branch in Erbil had arrested 2,801 terrorism suspects since the beginning of the year. Bassema Darwish, a Yazidi survivor of IS captivity, remained detained without trial in Erbil since her arrest in October 2014 in the town of Zummar when it was recaptured by Peshmerga forces from IS. The authorities accused her of complicity in the killing of three Peshmerga officials, but denied her the right to a lawyer of her own choosing and failed to conduct an independent investigation into allegations that General Security Directorate officials in Dohuk tortured her after her arrest. Courts in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq continued to pass death sentences for terrorism-related offences; no executions were carried out. DEATH PENALTY Courts sentenced dozens to death by hanging; scores of executions were carried out. Public and political pressure on the authorities to execute “terrorists” mounted following a suicide bombing in the Karrada neighbourhood of Baghdad on 2 July that killed nearly 300 people, mostly civilians. A militia leader threatened to kill death row inmates at Nasriya Prison if the government failed to act. On 12 July, President Masum ratified a law amending the Code of Criminal Procedures to limit the possibility of retrials, aimed at speeding up the execution process. On 21 August, the government announced the execution of 36 men convicted of 199