The Iraq Government has canceled a 1951 law which abolished the Iraqi citizenship of Jews who emigrated from the country, according to Arab press reports received here today. The Iraq Government simultaneously abolished compulsory custodianship over property left behind by migrating Jews. Such property was ruled to be “abandoned property.”
According to the press reports, the actions were taken because abolition of the citizenship of such emigrants was “contrary to the Iraq constitution” under which citizenship “is the inalienable right of all Iraqis.”
The citizenship law was promulgated when most Iraq Jews left for Israel by the Government of Nuri es Said, which was overthrown in Premier Kassem’s revolution. The canceled law provided that any Iraq Jew who left the country and did not return before expiration of his passport automatically lost his citizenship and the Government obtained the right to confiscate his property.
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