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A former Iraqi lawmaker who spent more than a decade on death row in Iraq has been found dead in an apartment in Beirut, and Lebanese authorities are investigating his death as a murder.

Getting into it: The body of Ahmed al-Alwani, 57, was discovered in the apartment in Beirut’s Tariq al-Jdideh neighborhood after his family told the Iraqi Embassy they hadn’t heard from him in four days and his phones were off. A Lebanese judicial source said preliminary findings show he was strangled, and security officials said he appeared to have been hit on the head first.

Al-Alwani arrived in Beirut from Erbil, Iraq, last week and checked into a hotel, but officials said he soon left it for the apartment, which two Syrians and a Lebanese man had rented for $200 for two days. Authorities have arrested a Lebanese suspect and are searching for the two Syrians, who allegedly picked him up from the airport. Lebanon’s chief prosecutor is running the investigation himself, though no motive has been established.

Al-Alwani, a Sunni politician from Iraq’s Anbar province, became a leading figure in the 2012 and 2013 protests against Nouri al-Maliki’s Shiite-led government and frequently spoke out against Iran and the armed groups it backs in Iraq. He was arrested in a 2013 raid on his home in Ramadi that left his brother, five guards and two soldiers dead, and was sentenced to death on terrorism charges in 2014. He was released in April 2025 after an international campaign by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, which said he had been tortured in custody.

“This is not a passing incident to be brushed aside with condolences and condemnation,” al-Alwani’s office said, calling his death an “assassination.” “It is a crime that demands a firm official response and a transparent investigation that reveals who planned it, who carried it out and who else was involved.”

His death comes as tensions rise between Iraq’s government and Iran-backed militias, with Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi pushing armed groups to hand over their weapons.