In July 2020, the assassination of Hisham al-Hashimi sent shock waves throughout Iraq.
In the weeks before he was gunned down in his car while pulling up to his home, the prominent counterterrorism adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi had been researching — and publicly criticizing — how Shia militia groups with suspected ties to Iran were destabilizing Iraq.
As the new FRONTLINE documentary Iraq’s Assassins recounts, al-Hashimi had been particularly focused on exposing the inner workings and secretive leadership of one powerful, Iran-backed militia: Kata’ib Hezbollah, which he said was “considered the strongest and most dangerous group in the so-called Islamic resistance.”