ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has reported stopped his own order to remove the security unit in change of the parliament building and replacing them with new forces, after Kurdish MPs called the move unilateral and unacceptable.

“Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi has ordered the change of the special force protecting parliament without informing the Speaker of the Parliament or the MPs,” Shakhawan Abdullah, head of the parliamentary security and defense committee, told Rudaw on Friday.

Abdullah said he believes Abadi’s decision “could be his reaction to last week’s incidents in which he was attacked by a water bottle,”

“He [Abadi] ordered the commander of the force to escort out the MPs, but the commander opposed the order saying that MPs have immunity.”

According to Abdullah it was a Peshmerga unit that protected the Kurdish and some other MPs when angry mobs stormed the parliament building in central Baghdad last week.

The Kurdish unit has been tasked with the compound’s security since 2006.

Kurdish MP Aram Sheikh Mohammad who is now in the Kurdistan Region told Rudaw that Abadi’s move was illegal and that only a committee under the speaker of parliament can decide to replace the security force.

Sheikh Mohammed who is the deputy speaker of parliament and who survived an attack by protestors has reportedly contacted the defense minister and told him “that no one would be able to change the parliament security force without being approved by presidency of parliament,”

Sheikh Mohammed’s spokesperson praised the Kurdish security unit around parliament as “working very professionally without bias against or in favor of any political parties,”

Lawmaker Abdullah added that “the Kurdish security forces saved the lives of Kurdish as well as other lawmakers who were surrounded by protesters inside the parliament.”
rudaw.net