By The Pillar
March 7, 2025
An Iraqi Catholic leader has strongly denied an allegation of complicity in the 2014 kidnapping of a businesswoman, after a lawsuit filed this month in a U.S. court.
The complaint, filed Feb. 13 in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, alleges that Archbishop Bashar Warda “facilitated, through his connections to Iran-backed militias such as Rayan al Kildani’s Babylon Brigades, the scheme to extort, kidnap, torture, and attempt to kill” the plaintiff, Sara Saleem.
An authorized representative for Warda, the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Erbil, told The Pillar March 5 that “the archbishop categorically denies and rejects these defamatory allegations and will contest them vigorously in the appropriate forums.”
The 56-page lawsuit, filed Feb. 13, names Warda among 16 defendants it accuses of varying degrees of involvement in efforts to undermine the business interests of Saleem, an Iraqi-born U.S. citizen of Kurdish descent. The complaint demands a jury trial, seeking a judgment against the defendants with an award of damages.
The complaint says that Saleem, a Sunni Muslim, was kidnapped in the southern Iraqi city of Basra on Sept. 8, 2014, and held captive for a month, during which she was tortured. Iraq faced considerable upheaval at the time as the Islamic State group gained territory, increasing sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shia Muslims.
Saleem says she was targeted after she took out a $100 million loan from the Trade Bank of Iraq with her business partner Nizar Hanna Nasri, as well as his brothers Nameer Abdo Nasri and Ramiz Nasri, to fund a housing construction project near Basra. The three men, known collectively as the Hanna brothers, are Assyrian Christians based in Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan region.
Saleem alleges that her kidnapping followed her refusal to make a $2 million donation to Ahmed al-Maliki, the son of Iraq’s then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, both of whom are named as defendants. She says her kidnapping was organized by the Iran-backed terrorist group Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, with assistance from Hezbollah.
Her kidnappers took her to Baghdad where, the lawsuit says, she escaped on the 43rd day of her abduction. She sought refuge in the presidential palace, as she considered Fuad Masum, a fellow Kurd and Iraq’s president at the time, an ally. She says that members of Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq and Hezbollah targeted the palace, but she was able to flee to safety in the Kurdistan region and return to the U.S.
When she returned to Iraq three years later, she was engulfed in a complex legal battle that included lawsuits filed against her by the Hanna brothers, who she began to suspect of involvement in her kidnapping.
In 2021, Saleem filed a criminal complaint with the Iraqi authorities about the kidnapping. In March 2022, Saleem and the Trade Bank of Iraq jointly filed a criminal complaint against the Hanna brothers regarding the loan. According to the U.S. lawsuit, an Iraqi court convicted the Hanna brothers of criminally defrauding Saleem in July 2023, sentencing them to three years in prison.
The lawsuit alleges that Archbishop Warda interceded for the brothers with Nechirvan Barzani, president of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, “passing along a bribe to Barzani on the Hanna brothers’ behalf” and persuading him to secure the brothers’ release ahead of a retrial. The brothers were released on bail in November 2024 and acquitted in February by Iraq’s Chief Justice Faiq Zidane.
The lawsuit mentions Warda 16 times, alleging that he is a “close associate” of Rayan al-Kildani (Rayan the Chaldean), the head of Iraq’s Babylon Movement political party, who clashed publicly with Cardinal Louis Raphaël I Sako before the head of the Chaldean Catholic Church left Baghdad in 2023 for nine months.
The complaint also accuses the archbishop of being an associate of Qais al-Khazali, an Iraqi politician and founder of Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, who is also named as a defendant.
The lawsuit doesn’t offer an in-depth explanation of its claims against Warda, including the claim of complicity in the 2014 kidnapping.
Warda, a member of the Redemptorist order, is a well-known figure among Catholics worldwide due to his extensive travels to raise awareness of the plight of Iraq’s Christians.
The number of Christians has declined dramatically, from around 1.5 million at the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 to roughly 150,000 today. The Chaldean Catholic Church, one of the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with Rome, is the largest of Iraq’s Christian communities.
Warda, 55, visited the White House in 2018 for a ceremony in which President Donald Trump signed the Iraq and Syria Genocide Relief and Accountability Act into law.
The Chaldean Catholic Church hierarchy has been hampered by divisions in recent years.
Cardinal Sako said in September 2024 that he had filed a canonical complaint against several Chaldean bishops, including Warda. Sako had previously criticized the Chaldean bishops for skipping a July 2024 episcopal synod, which bishops are ordinarily required by canon law to attend, and an August 2024 spiritual retreat.
In a November 2024 interview with The Pillar, Warda addressed claims that he is close to Rayan al-Kildani, who was added to a U.S. Treasury Department sanctions list in 2019.
He said: “I am not a politician, I am a bishop, and as such my door is open to everyone.”
“Of course, it should be said that Rayan al-Kildani works in Baghdad, not in Erbil, politically he is completely outside of my region.”
“But people should know that I have welcomed, and will welcome, anyone, because the role of the Church is to be a bridge of peace and reconciliation. Throughout history, and especially recent history, the Catholic Church has played a role in really creating an atmosphere of reconciliation, and as far as I know there was no Vatican decree listing names of people the Church cannot deal with internationally or locally.”
Warda added: “If a person or a group is acting in a wrong way, then I have to be able to say so. But if I shut the door, then to whom would I say it? If they did anything wrong, I have the right to say that what is happening is wrong.”
