Murder of Du'a Khalil Aswad

Du'a Khalil Aswad was born to a Yazidi family from Bashiqa. She was killed aged 17. Before her killing, some reports claimed that she had converted to Islam to marry a Sunni Muslim boy.^[4] However, other reports claimed that she did not come home one night, which caused her family to shame her.^[5]

According to a reporter in who interviewed local Yazidis at the scene of the murder, some people stated that before Du'a was killed, she ran away from home to be with her Muslim boyfriend and they had been stopped at a checkpoint outside Mosul, while others stated that her father and uncle saw her just talking with the boy, and that Du'a and the boy both fled to the police station in fear. Regardless of the conflicting testimonies, the police handed Du'a to a local Yazidi sheikh.^[6]

Some reports stated that Du'a lived with the Yazidi sheikh for a few days until her family persuaded her that she was forgiven, after which she returned home.^[5] Other reports supported the claim, but stated that the sheikh was Muslim and not Yazidi.^[1] It was unknown whether the same members of her family that convinced her to return home were the ones responsible for her death. It was also unknown how Du'a was captured, with some claiming that she was ambushed while returning to home, while others claimed that the mob entered her home and dragged her outside. The mob consisted of local Yazidi men estimated to be a few hundred to two thousand individuals.^[7][6][1]

The mob captured Du'a and took her to the Bashiqa town square;^[6] and was reportedly stripped naked to symbolize that she had dishonored her family and religion. Although she was stripped naked, some of the crowd attempted to keep her genitals covered. She was then surrounded by the men who began stoning her. During the stoning, Du'a repeatedly attempted to get up, although the crowd kept taunting her and throwing large rocks and pieces of concrete at her head. The stoning lasted around 30 minutes, after which Du'a died.^[1] After she had died, her body was tied to a car and dragged through the streets.^[6] The men buried her with the remains of a dead stray dog.^[8]

After Du'a was killed, hundreds of Kurds protested in Erbil and called for an end to honor killings.^[9][10]

In Mosul on 22 April, there was an explosion in which 23 Yazidis were killed and for which the Islamic State of Iraq claimed responsibility, which was widely believed to be a reprisal attack for the murder of Du'a.^[11][12][3] The same day also witnessed another reprisal attack, claimed by Jamaat Ansar al-Sunna, of a suicide car bomb that targeted the village of Tel Isqof, killing 25 Yazidis and Assyrians.^[13][14] Both the murder of Du'a and the reprisal attacks were condemned by Amnesty International^[5] and the Kurdistan Regional Government which asked the federal government to investigate.^[15]

The Qahtaniyah bombings on the Yazidi towns of Kahtaniya and Jazeera in August 2007, killed at least 800 and wounded another 1,500 people.^[16][2] After the June 2014 Northern Iraq offensive, the Islamic State captured Bashiqa and renamed it to Du'a City.^[17][18]

In 2010, four men were found guilty of murdering Du'a Khalil Aswad and sentenced to death. Two of them were her cousins, Aras Farid Salim and Wahid Farid Salim.^[19] The other two were Reyaz Kamal Omar and Zeyad Mahmmud Khder.^[20]

• Stoning of Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow
• Genocide of Yazidis by ISIL
• Murder of Farkhunda
• Femicide
• Honor killing

Honor killings involving Iraqis

• Noor Almaleki – 20-year-old Iraqi American woman murdered by her father's vehicle in Phoenix, Arizona, United States in 2009 for refusing an arranged marriage.
• Banaz Mahmod – 20-year-old Kurdish woman killed by her family in Mitcham, South London, United Kingdom for ending a forced marriage and having a relationship of her choice.