Kirkuk (Agenzia Fides) – Now also in Kirkuk in the province of which it is the principal city, many properties and homes belonging to Christian citizens are being taken from the legitimate owners by means of falsified documents which prevent the legal owners from regaining their property. The phenomenon, confirmed and reported also in Baghdad, began thanks to connivance and cover-up on the part of corrupt and dishonest officials, at the service of individual or organised gangs of impostors and swindlers. In a recent case – according to the Iraqi website ankawa.com – a group of homes belonging to temporarily absent Christian citizens was raised to the ground and replaced with a car-park.
Such “legalised” robbery of properties belonging to Christian families was closely connected with the exodus en masse of Iraqi Christians following US led military interventions to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein. Swindlers take possession of homes and land left empty relying on the fact that there is little probability that the owners will ever return to reclaim the properties in question. In Iraq Christian members of parliament and Christian citizens’ associations have appealed to the local administration to put an end to the phenomenon of false certification on which this form of swindle is based.
