The Iraqi Finance Ministry said on Sunday that it had fired a ministry employee who tried in March to evict a Sunni Arab widow and her family from their home in a mostly Shiite neighborhood of western Baghdad. The woman refused to move and was shot dead the day after being visited by two Shiite men identifying themselves as Finance Ministry guards.
The ministry said in a written statement released to the New York Times that the employee had tried to evict the widow, Suaada Saadoun, 49, without getting official permission from the ministry.
The ministry did not name the employee, but Saadoun's relatives and neighbors said after her death on March 28 that the ministry official pushing for the eviction was named Ali Jezairi.
The statement said Finance Minister Bayan Jabr, a conservative Shiite, had ordered an investigation after reading about the case in an article published in the Times on March 30. The article documented Saadoun's efforts to avoid being evicted from her home and her subsequent murder.
The statement by the Finance Ministry represented the first time an Iraqi government body had announced that it was punishing someone for attempting an illegal eviction. But the ministry failed to address the killing of Saadoun.
Sectarian displacement has become widespread across Iraq, with Shiite and Sunni militias trying to rid neighborhoods in Baghdad and other cities of members of the rival sect.
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