Since the demise of strongman Saddam Hussein, it is fair to say that Iraq’s judicial system has undergone significant changes.

At first, says a new report from the Iraq Watch Group of the Middle East Centre of the London School of Economics (LSE), the reforms appeared to create a more independent judiciary.

However, the truth quickly emerged that it has instead become increasingly centralized and politicized.

The Iraq Watch Group says that judicial power in Iraq has increasingly been concentrated within the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) and the Federal Supreme Court (FSC), with new laws granting unchecked control to SJC president Faiq Zaidan.

Zaidan uses his power to serve personal interests and, often, those of the nation’s political elites — No case shows the depth of the politicization more than the ongoing, now 11-year, battle between Kurdish-American businesswoman Sara Hamid Saleem Miran and the Iraqi judiciary — most notably, against Faiq Zaidan and his minions.

Not only was Saleem defrauded by her business partners – they had her kidnapped (until her miraculous escape) — but they continue to this day to use their political connections to seize her assets and demonize her.

Iraq’s Iranian-backed power structure was deeply offended that a (well-qualified) Kurdish woman was overseeing renovations at the historic Basra International Hotel. Yet, she had earned the right.

In 2005, Saleem became chief of engineering for a property development firm co-owned by Nechirvan Barzani, Kurdistan’s then prime minister. After serving as project manager for a huge shopping mall development, she got the hotel renovation job – and a visit from an assassin telling her to leave Basra or die.

When she refused, her apartment was bombed, but she persevered.

In 2013, Saleem began her investment work in a massive residential development — a real estate housing project called Safat Al Basra, under her company Al Saqr Al Jarih. She then borrowed millions from the Trade Bank of Iraq to finish the massive project.

But then came the extortion: a demand to contribute $2 million from the loan to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s campaign.

When she again refused to be extorted, she was kidnapped.

Only later did Saleem learn of the complicity of her business partners — the Hanna, or Nasri, brothers – in both her kidnapping and the extortion effort.

Their true objective? To get away with the theft of over $100 million loan from TBI Bank, to overtake the Safat Al Basra Project, to seize her other assets, and ultimately, to kill her.

After recovering from her kidnapping, Saleem would return to Iraq, only to then have her passport seized. There was also a warrant for her arrest — but not for the Hanna brothers, who had absconded with project funds.

She then filed a lawsuit against the brothers — and ran afoul of Justice Zaidan, whom she now sees as “the most dangerous man in Iraq.”

Amazingly, an Iraqi judge convicted the Hanna brothers of fraud and sentenced them to three years in prison. But barely a year later, the brothers — having paid a $15 million bribe — were freed and granted an ongoing, rigged retrial intended to acquit them of wrongdoing and hold Saleem herself for the missing millions.

The TBI bank, and even her former employer, Nechirvan Barzani, had sold her down the river — all (it appears) in the service of Iran.

Zaidan, who had been a protector of Iranian terrorist Qasem Soleimani’s efforts to attack U.S. bases in Iraq and Kurdistan, actually issued a warrant for the arrest of President Trump. Such stunts led then-Rep. Michael Waltz (now U.S. National Security Advisor) to call Judge Zaidan and the SJC “tools of Iranian influence” in Iraq and at the center of Iran’s plot to turn Iraq into a client state.

Now, the Saleem case has become the poster child for the newly introduced bipartisan bill in Congress — the “Free Iraq from Iran” Act, spearheaded by Representatives Joe Wilson (R-SC) and Jimmy Panetta (D-CA). This legislation calls for an aggressive U.S. strategy to support Iraqi sovereignty by dismantling Iran-backed militias and cracking down on Iranian political interference in Iraq — starting with corrupt actors like Faiq Zaidan.

Saleem’s story perfectly embodies the danger of unchecked Iranian control and the price brave Iraqis and Americans pay when they resist it. Zaidan and a group of judges under his influence have been raking in millions of dollars in bribes to obtain favorable legal outcomes — including the sale of pardons for over 70 types of crimes — and shipping much of that money to Iran-backed militias. Judge Zaidan has even seized effective control of the Federal Supreme Court.

International human rights attorney Robert Amsterdam, whose firm represents Saleem, filed a lawsuit alongside Akiva Shapiro of Gibson Dunn in February in U.S. district court against Zaidan and several other senior Iraqi government officials. The charges, filed under the U.S. Anti-Terrorism and Torture Victims Protection Acts, include “brutal acts of extortion, kidnapping, torture, and attempted murder.”

Meanwhile, the highly talented “female American-Kurdish” project engineer continues to face the corrupted Iraqi legal system.

Just last month, a motion filed by Amsterdam’s firm to recuse Judge Satar Warwar from her ongoing case was denied — even though, as presiding judge, he had refused to allow her legal team to speak, laughed and joked with the Hanna brothers, and denied Saleem’s lawyers the right to question the brothers during their fabricated testimony.

In response to this affront, Amsterdam said, “This whole sham retrial is being orchestrated at the behest of Faiq Zaidan, which only adds to the absurdity of this entire process.”

Amsterdam then revealed a video that showed Zaidan’s blatant disregard for due process and his attempts to manipulate legal actions for his own purposes — such as taking the stage to announce a warrant for President Trump.

The release of the LSE report, says Amsterdam, “proves that Zaidan is deeply involved in politicized networks of corruption and pay-for-play rulings.” Amsterdam, noting that the Saleem case is a prime example of Zaidan’s misdeeds, hopes that making her long ordeal public will “shine a light on these unlawful activities”.

For now, it may help fuel Congressional momentum to finally hold Iran’s proxies accountable.

This article originally appeared at Blitz