The College of Law at the University of Baghdad discussed a master’s thesis entitled “The Effect of Criminal Judgment on the Employment Status of Police Officers—A Comparative Study” by the student Noor Al-Din Adel Mousa, in the Criminal Law Department, on Thursday, July 17, 2025, in the Virtual Courtroom Hall at the college.
The discussion committee consisted of
1. Prof. Dr. Amal Fadel Abdul-Khashan (Chairman)
2. Prof. Dr. Nawal Tariq Ibrahim (Member)
3. Dr. Eyad Abdul-Hamza Bayawi (Member)
4. Prof. Dr. Alaa Nasser Hussein (Member and Supervisor)
The thesis aimed to identify the shortcomings in the legal provisions related to the imposition of supplementary penalties on police officers as a result of criminal judgments, as stipulated in the Internal Security Forces Penal Code No. (14) of 2008 (as amended). Specifically, it examined whether the types of crimes that lead to dismissal or discharge from service are consistent with, or contrary to, the general provisions set out in the Penal Code No. (111) of 1969 (as amended), and to establish the legal nature of the provisions affected by criminal judgments.
The thesis was divided into two chapters: the first addressed the concept of criminal judgment and the employment status of police officers; the second examined the legal effects of a criminal judgment at different stages of a police officer’s career.
The thesis concluded with several recommendations, the most notable of which are:
1.The Iraqi legislator should reword paragraph (a), item (First), of Article (38) of the Internal Security Forces Penal Code No. (14) of 2008 (as amended), to make the text more precise and to include life imprisonment, as well as to delete the phrase “terrorism crimes” from paragraph (b) of the same article and retain only crimes affecting state security. This is because terrorism crimes are already classified as felonies under paragraph (a) once amended. The revised text would therefore read: “Crimes punishable by felony penalties.”
2.The Iraqi legislator should make the discretionary retirement of police officers a discretionary supplementary penalty for the Internal Security Forces Court, in cases where judicial judgments are issued against them for crimes listed in Article (3/Second) of Instructions No. (1) of 2012, which concern cases in which a police officer may be referred to retirement.
