Suspects left Beirut apartment 14 minutes after Alwani landed, office says

BAGHDAD — People seen in surveillance footage left a Beirut apartment 14 minutes after former Iraqi lawmaker Ahmed al-Alwani’s flight landed, his media office said Wednesday, questioning whether they knew in advance that he was coming.

The office released a preliminary timeline of his Nov. 5 trip a day after his death in Lebanon was confirmed. It said preliminary information suggested the same people may have returned to the building around 11 p.m., and footage shows them leaving it at 11:57 p.m.

“This does not establish the time when the crime occurred, which remains a matter for forensic medicine and criminal investigation,” the statement said.

The office called on Lebanon’s security and judicial agencies to identify the people in the footage, investigate their links to the apartment and the killing, and determine whether any arrangements had been made before Alwani arrived.

Alwani, a Sunni former MP from Anbar, was found dead in Beirut on Tuesday. He was sentenced to death in 2014 and freed in 2025 under an amnesty law. Iraq’s ambassador to Lebanon said Tuesday that Lebanon’s judiciary had opened an investigation and assigned a special judge to the case.

“Out of concern for revealing the truth and correcting the information circulating, we are clarifying the preliminary timeline of events,” the office said.

According to the statement, Alwani arrived in Beirut on Thursday, Nov. 5, on Middle East Airlines flight ME325 from Erbil. The Airbus A320 took off at 4:09 p.m. Erbil time and landed at Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport at 4:41 p.m. Beirut time, 14 minutes ahead of schedule. Beirut is an hour behind Erbil.

The footage received by the office shows the people leaving the apartment at 4:55 p.m., the statement said. The office’s headline question was whether they “had prior knowledge of his arrival.”

The office estimated that Alwani cleared entry procedures and collected his luggage around 5:15 p.m., and said the apartment was about 6 kilometers from the airport. It said the time he actually left the airport and the route he took to the residence had not been verified.

Former lawmaker Mishaan al-Jubouri said on X on Tuesday that Alwani had been abducted from Beirut’s airport. 964media could not verify his account.

“The doctor’s last call with the office was at 9:05 p.m. and lasted two minutes and 30 seconds,” the office said. It said the call only told the office that he had arrived in Beirut and was moving from the airport to his residence.

The call came more than four hours after the flight landed. The office asked investigators to match it against the other evidence and to set the time of death through forensic examination.

The office said that according to the information available to it, Alwani did not stay at any hotel on the day he arrived. It also rejected reports that attributed unverified information or timelines to its representatives.

“We categorically deny the accuracy of any reports, timings or details attributed to the media office that were not officially issued by it,” the statement said.

The office also asked for a review of surveillance footage from the airport, the residential building and the roads around it, checked against flight records and immigration data, to establish Alwani’s movements after landing. It urged investigators to examine whether earlier communications or arrangements were connected to his arrival and to the movements of the people under suspicion.

It called on the Iraqi government, the Foreign Ministry and the Iraqi Embassy in Beirut to follow the case and coordinate directly with Lebanese authorities.

Alwani, born in Anbar in 1969, held a doctorate and entered parliament in 2006. He played a prominent role in the 2012-2013 Anbar protests against the government of Nouri al-Maliki, then prime minister.

Security forces arrested him on terrorism charges in a raid on his home in Ramadi on Dec. 28, 2013. His brother and several guards were killed in the raid. In 2014, a court sentenced him to death for killing two soldiers.

He stayed in detention until 2025, when he was released after his case was covered by Iraq’s General Amnesty Law, which parliament had amended earlier that year.