The Karkh Criminal Court in Iraq on Monday sentenced four individuals to six years in prison for promoting the ideology of the banned Ba’ath Party. The Court found the defendants guilty of belonging to and promoting Ba’ath Party ideas, including possession of prohibited materials on their mobile phones, in Kirkuk province during 2025 and 2026.

The case was centered on provisions of the Iraqi Penal Code, and Articles 8 and 9 of (First) of Law No. 32 of 2016, which criminalize Ba’ath Party activities and the promotion of associated racist, terrorist and “takfirist” organizations.

The ruling reflects continued enforcement of Iraq’s de-Baathification framework established after the 2003 US-led invasion that removed Saddam Hussein from power. The policy dismantled Ba’ath-linked institutions, including the military and civil service, and barred senior party members from public employment. Enforcement is now largely handled through the Accountability and Justice Commission, which screens political candidates and public officials for Ba’athist ties and retains authority to disqualify individuals from government roles.

The Ba’ath Party, which governed Iraq under Saddam Hussein from 1968 until 2003, was formally banned after the invasion. The post-invasion legal framework was designed to eliminate the party’s influence from state institutions, though critics such as Shamiran Mako and some political factions have long argued that the policy contributed to the mass exclusion of Sunni Arabs from public life. Mako argues that “the absence of parallel, cross-communal peacebuilding initiatives intensified interethnic distrust of the statebuilding process, which exacerbated communal fractionalization and exclusion at the onset of the transition.”

In a similar case less than a year ago, the Karkh Criminal Court imposed a six-year prison sentence on a defendant for belonging to and promoting the ideology of the banned Ba’ath Party. The court found that the individual had attended Ba’ath Party meetings and possessed publications promoting its ideology on a mobile phone. The ruling was also issued under Article 8 (First) of Law No. 32 of 2016.