Sara Saleem filed a civil action in a US federal court against 15 defendants besides Archbishop Warda, alleging that they conspired in her abduction and torture in 2014.
She said the archbishop abetted her former business partners in defrauding her of millions of dollars and consorted with those responsible for her abduction. Warda has repeatedly denied the allegations.
Saleem told The Tablet this week that the Vatican should suspend Warda, a senior prelate of the Chaldean Catholic Church, and investigate his conduct.
She alleged that he invoked Church authority when making threats and was “the centre of bribery and corruption” for criminal groups.
With her son acting as a translator, she said the defendants were “exactly like snakes: put them in the grass and they turn green, put them in the desert and they look like sand”.
She called Warda “the merchant of religion in the mafia” who had tried “to stamp on my neck by using his clerical authority”.
“He scares and threatens people in the name of the Vatican,” she said. “Does the Vatican agree with Bashar Warda’s actions?”
In a statement in early March, Warda “categorically” denied Saleem’s “defamatory accusations”.
He issued a further denial last week, saying he had been “unjustly” included on the list of defendants and that his involvement had been limited to seeking a resolution to her dispute outside the courts. Since this failed, the judiciary “has held jurisdiction over the dispute ever since”.
Responding to Saleem’s allegations that he had invoked the Vatican to influence the courts, Warda told The Tablet that the Church holds “no authority over the judiciary in any form, nor do we ever seek to exercise any influence upon it”, and that his position “does not give me the right to misuse the Church or to claim the authority of the Vatican”.
“It is both shameful and disgraceful to suggest that I am using the Vatican as a reference to influence a judicial decision,” he said.
The complaint, first filed in November last year and updated in February, seeks redress for “brutal acts of extortion, kidnapping, torture, and attempted murder” by the defendants.
Besides Warda, they include Iraqi politicians and officials, the Iran-backed paramilitary groups Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq (AAH) and Hezbollah, and Saleem’s former business partner Nizar Hanna Nasri – an Assyrian Christian – alongside his two brothers.
Saleem alleges that she was kidnapped in 2014 after refusing to pay a bribe during a major real estate project, for which she and Hanna had taken out a $100 million loan with the Trade Bank of Iraq.
The complaint describes her abduction by AAH gunmen and torture over several weeks, and includes a dramatic account of her escape involving a gun battle between police and militia and eventual flight to the US.
It then details her return to Iraq and subsequent legal struggle to resume her real estate projects, which she says were obstructed by the defendants in her complaint.
This culminated in a criminal case in 2022 against the Hanna brothers – whom she came to believe had conspired in her abduction – who were convicted of fraud and imprisoned in 2023.
She alleges that Warda was among those who “manipulated the underlying judicial proceedings” to bring about the Hanna brothers’ release pending a retrial, allowing them to flee the country last year.
She specifically accuses the archbishop of “passing along a bribe” to Nechirvan Barzani, the president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Region where his diocese is located, to intercede on their behalf.
Saleem further claims Warda had “aided and abetted” her abduction through his purported links to the militia leader Rayan a-Kildani, who commands the Iran-backed Babylon Brigades.
Regarding his dealings with the Hanna brothers, Warda said it was part of the “social aspect” of the Church in Iraq. He said the history of Christian persecution “led the Church to care for the needs of its people from birth to death”.
He cited the 13,000 Christians who fled to the Archdiocese of Erbil rather than UN refugee camps when Islamic State invaded northern Iraq in 2014 to show how “the Church is a central point of reference for the faithful in the East”.
“When believers face a social issue – even one of a legal nature – they often turn first and exclusively to the Church for counsel, not to influence judicial proceedings in any way,” he said.
“I reiterate once again that my role was limited to offering counsel and encouraging the conflicting parties to seek peaceful reconciliation. When they decided to go to court, I withdrew from the matter.”
Warda has been Archbishop of Erbil since 2009 and has become a prominent advocate and fundraiser for Christians in Iraq, often travelling to Europe and the US to promote their cause.
In asserting the US court’s jurisdiction over the defendants, Saleem’s filing says he “maintains commercial ties and business relationships with US-based humanitarian organisations” besides transacting business and transferring funds through the US banking system.
In September, the Chaldean Patriarch of Baghdad Cardinal Louis Raphaël I Sako reported Warda and four other bishops to the Pope for defying his authority. The Vatican has yet to issue a ruling in the case.