Iraqi ex-MP's final movements revealed: Syrians, a Range Rover and a Beirut murder mystery

An Iraqi politician was escorted from a Beirut hotel by a mysterious group of Syrians in a Range Rover before being found dead in an apartment, it emerged on Thursday.

Ahmed Al Alwani's last movements before his disappearance and killing were revealed by Iraqi authorities as they investigate what they say is his murder.

Iraq and Lebanon are working together on the investigation, the Iraqi government said, as it warned against inflaming sectarian tensions after the former MP's killing in a Sunni area of Beirut.

Police found Mr Al Alwani's body in an apartment in the Lebanese capital on Monday. Reports said he had been strangled. He had arrived in Lebanon last Thursday on a flight from Erbil.

After landing, he took a taxi to a Beirut hotel, said Lt Gen Saad Maan, the head of Iraq's Security Media Authority.

But he spent less than an hour at the hotel before checking out with men speaking a Syrian dialect, who appeared to hotel staff to be his friends. The group then got into a white Range Rover, Lt Gen Maan told the Iraqi News Agency.

Mr Al Alwani, 57, is believed to have had a prior relationship with the group. They drove in the Range Rover to an apartment in Beirut's Tareeq Al Jadeeda neighbourhood.

Lt Gen Maan said Mr Al Alwani made two phone calls to his family, the second of which was from the apartment in Tareeq Al Jadeeda. Relatives reported him missing several days later, prompting the Iraqi embassy to make inquiries.

After the landlord noticed an unusual smell on his way to collect the $200 per night rent, police found Mr Al Alwani's decomposing body.

The Iraqi ambassador and embassy staff in Beirut are in close contact with Lebanese authorities, and Iraq's National Intelligence Service has “spared no effort in uncovering this crime and reaching the truth”, it said.

Show caption: Mr Al Alwani, 57, was a prominent Sunni politician. Photo: A…

The body was identified through DNA testing and by Mr Al Alwani's relatives. The Lebanese apartment owner has been detained as a precaution while investigations continue, Lt Gen Maan said.

Mr Al Alwani’s office described his death as an “assassination” and called for a “transparent investigation”

The Security Media Cell statement urged the public to await the outcome of investigations and criticised attempts to use the killing to deepen sectarian divisions.

“While we stress the need to respect the progress of the investigations and await their official results, we express our deep regret over the attempts to exploit this crime to stir up sectarian strife and promote incitement and hate speech that affect the social fabric and threaten civil peace,” it said.

Mr Al Alwani, a Sunni Muslim from the prominent Albu Alwan tribe, served two terms in parliament between 2005 and 2014, representing the western province of Anbar, and was an outspoken critic of Iran's influence on Iraq's politics and economy.

He was arrested in December 2013 on terrorism charges for inciting violence against the Shiite-led government. His brother, five guards and two troops were killed in an exchange of fire with security forces when his entourage resisted arrest in the city of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar.

An Iraqi delegation will be sent to Beirut to help with the investigation, according to AFP.