Shot at the Wheel in Baghdad
Tara Fares, a 22-year-old Iraqi model with millions of online followers, was shot dead in her car in Baghdad in September 2018. Her killing came amid a string of deaths of prominent Iraqi women whose public profiles had drawn hostility.
Killed in her car
On 27 September 2018, unidentified attackers opened fire on Tara Fares as she sat in her car in the Kam Sara neighbourhood of Baghdad. The 22-year-old model died after suffering three gunshot wounds, according to Middle East Eye, which cited Iraq’s interior ministry. The ministry said it had opened an investigation into the shooting.
Fares was among the most-followed Iraqi figures on social media, with about 2.7 million followers on Instagram, where she posted fashion images and commentary, Arab News reported. In 2013 she was voted beauty queen of Baghdad and went on to be a runner-up in the Miss Iraq competition, according to Wikipedia. She lived in the Kurdish city of Erbil and travelled frequently to the capital for work, Newsweek reported.
A pattern of killings
Fares’s death followed those of several other prominent Iraqi women within weeks. Rafif al-Yaseri, who ran a well-known cosmetic surgery centre in Baghdad, and Rasha al-Hassan, founder of the Viola beauty centre, were both found dead at home in August 2018 in circumstances that were not immediately explained, Arab News reported. On 25 September, two days before Fares was killed, the human-rights campaigner Suad al-Ali was shot dead as she got into her car in the southern city of Basra, according to the Enabling Peace in Iraq Center, which described her as head of the human rights organisation al-Wid al-Alami for Human Rights.
The sequence of deaths prompted concern that women with visible public lives were being targeted. Fares, who was active online rather than in politics, had cultivated a following built on fashion and outspoken personal commentary, coverage of her death noted.
Official response
Iraq’s then prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, ordered security agencies to investigate the recent killings and abductions. In a statement, his office cited “evidence suggesting that there is a plan formulated by organized parties to undermine security under the pretext of fighting against depravity,” Arab News reported.
On 7 October 2018, Iraq’s interior minister, Qasim al-Araji, said members of “an extremist group” were responsible for Fares’s killing, though he did not name the group and no suspects were identified at the time, according to Kurdistan24. “We will pursue criminals and those who tamper with the security of the citizens through killings and kidnappings,” he said. The names of any suspects had still not been released two years later, public records of the case indicate.
Fares’s killing has since been cited by rights researchers as an example of the risks facing women whose visibility online challenges social conservatism, a concern that has persisted in the years since her death.