Troops escort Iraq PM’s oil smuggling probe to Jurf al-Sakhar

BABIL — A large military force escorting Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s investigative committee reached the entrance to Jurf al-Sakhar in northern Babil on Friday morning, the committee’s first field deployment in its inquiry into suspected oil smuggling.

Video footage showed the deployment at the entrance to the area. The committee and its escort were waiting for more military reinforcements before starting work inside Jurf al-Sakhar, according to information obtained by 964media.

A document from the Office of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces sets out the committee’s membership and mandate. It puts the director general of discipline and security at the Popular Mobilization Commission, the state body that runs the Popular Mobilization Forces, in the chair.

The PMF is the state-sanctioned umbrella of mostly Shiite armed groups formed in 2014 to fight the Islamic State group.

The document, dated Thursday, is marked “secret and personal, to be opened by the addressee only” and signed by Lt. Gen. Abdul Amir al-Shammari, director of the commander-in-chief’s office. It also orders the Federal Police to provide a convoy to protect the committee.

The committee has 11 members drawn from security, oversight and executive bodies. Alongside the chair, they are Muayad al-Saadi, an adviser to the prime minister; the secretary for intelligence and security affairs at the commander-in-chief’s office; the director of integrity investigations; the Oil Ministry’s director general of oil products; the deputy commander of the Federal Police; and the deputy head of the Counter-Terrorism Service.

Four Interior Ministry officials complete the list: the directors of intelligence and counterterrorism, of operations, of forensic evidence and of the Energy Police.

The document tasks the committee with “investigating information concerning the smuggling of oil products within the Jurf al-Nasr area, taking the necessary measures and providing the Office of the Commander-in-Chief with the investigation’s findings.”

When Zaidi ordered the inquiry Wednesday, it was to be made up of the Federal Police, the Energy Police, the Federal Commission of Integrity, the Federal Intelligence and Investigations Agency and the Popular Mobilization Commission.

Jurf al-Sakhar was officially renamed Jurf al-Nasr in 2014 after Iraqi forces and allied armed groups recaptured it from Isis. It is widely regarded as a stronghold of Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-aligned faction that has brigades in the PMF and that the United States designated a terrorist organization in 2009.

The area has remained under tight security restrictions since 2014, and many of its displaced residents still cannot return.

The deployment came a day after Babil Governor Ali Turki resigned under pressure from Qais al-Khazali, leader of the Iran-aligned faction Asaib Ahl al-Haq, a source told 964media. 964media could not independently verify the account, and Khazali had not commented publicly on it by Thursday evening.

Turki was elected governor in January as the candidate of Sadiqoun, Asaib’s political wing. On Tuesday he rejected the smuggling allegations after an unannounced visit with journalists to the site named in an intelligence report. He said it was an old fuel station called al-Madina al-Munawwara, which had been used for about four years to fuel Federal Police and PMF vehicles.

The report, which began circulating Monday, alleges that oil is drawn from a pipeline in Jurf al-Sakhar through an unauthorized opening and carried away in tanker trucks. 964media could not verify the report or confirm which agency prepared it.

Security expert Sarmad al-Bayati disputed the governor’s account Wednesday in an interview with presenter Yasser Amer. “This report was issued by a respected Iraqi government agency, the people behind it are professional officers, and they submitted it three months ago,” he said. Bayati said the agency’s logo could be seen in the report’s images.

Parliament Speaker Haibat al-Halbousi on Wednesday also ordered a committee of lawmakers to investigate the report, along with intelligence on oil smuggled from the Kirkuk fields and the Kurdistan Region through Iran to Afghanistan. That committee will report to parliament’s leadership.

Neither committee has announced findings.