The Intelligence Agency announced today, Tuesday, the arrest of a group that ran pages selling weapons in Baghdad.

It stated in a statement, “In implementation of the directives of the Minister of the Interior, which include monitoring and following up on people who sell weapons in violation of regulations, the intelligence agency’s detachments, through their monitoring of social networking sites, monitored pages within social networking sites managed by unknown persons who display various weapons in order to sell them to citizens without controls or licenses,” indicating that “this phenomenon has contributed to the spread of organized crime, an increase in cases of attacks on citizens, and an increase in the rates of tribal conflicts.”

It added, "An intelligence and technical work team was formed to investigate and locate these websites. Our detachments were able to overthrow this group and reach them through those social media pages, where they were arrested and their websites were closed."

It added that the statements of "the defendants were recorded and they explicitly admitted to owning these pages and promoting the sale of unlicensed weapons through them. The defendants were also referred to the relevant authorities in preparation for their appearance before the judiciary to receive their just punishment."

The Intelligence Agency called on "citizens to report all outlaws throughout Iraq by calling the free hotline 144."/End

Source: National Iraqi News Agency