Family members of slain activist Soad al-Ali load her coffin onto a vehicle before burial, in the Iraqi city of Basra, on September 26. (AP)

London- Asharq Al- Awsat

The controversy over the assassination of Tara Fares, part of a series of events known as the “assassination of Iraqi beauties,” has not ended yet. It was the fourth case after the death of two cosmetic experts in mysterious circumstances last month, along with the assassination of Human Rights Activist Soad al-Ali in Basra.

Another Iraqi beauty queen confirmed that she had received death threats, which promoted Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to issue an order to investigate the case.

Tara, who was shot in the capital Baghdad, was a beauty queen of Iraq and described by some newspapers, including French Le Monde, as “too liberal in a conservative society… a society full of armed religious militias.”

Various media sources hinted that those behind these assassinations might be linked to the Iranian-backed militias, recalling similar events carried out by parties within Iran in the nineties of the last century.

In 1999, six young men between 19 and 25 years-old kidnapped five people and killed them in ways that the Iranian media described as “brutal”, before being arrested and later found to belong to the Basij, an armed militia of the IRGC. The defendants had Basij cards and stamps and used the militia’s headquarters as a detention center for the victims. They said in the court record that they “do not regret the killing of the victims because they were corrupting the land.”

At that time, the Iranian government was headed by Reformist Mohammad Khatami, whose administration has faced accusations of complacency to the West from Iranian lobbyists.