Show Trials, Collective Punishment a Flawed Response to ISIS
Crimes - Fred Abrahams
These atrocities demand justice, but the Iraqi government has so
far relied on the heavy hand. It has reportedly detained at least 19,000
people for alleged ISIS ties and Iraqi courts have sentenced more than
3,000 people to death. The trials have been rushed and deeply flawed,
including confessions apparently after torture.
Iraqi
authorities have forced families with relatives suspected of being ISIS members into prison
camps. They have destroyed some of their homes.
Kurdistan Region of Iraq: Protesters, Journalists Detained
Freedom of Assembly Suppressed (Beirut) – Kurdistan Regional Government
security forces detained participants in December 2017 protests around
Sulaymaniyah and forced them to sign statements promising not to criticize the
government.
The detained protesters were held for up to eight days
without being taken before a judge and were forced, before being released, to
sign commitments not to protest or be critical of the government on social
media. The KRG’s Asayish forces also detained three journalists who were
covering protests, apparently for their work.
Kurdistan Region of Iraq: 350 Prisoners ‘Disappeared’
Families Seek Whereabouts After Iraqi Takeover of Kirkuk
Those missing are mainly Sunni Arabs, displaced to Kirkuk or
residents of the city, detained by the regional government’s security forces,
the Asayish, on suspicion of Islamic State (also known as ISIS) affiliation
after the regional forces took control of Kirkuk in June 2014. Local officials
told Human Rights Watch that the prisoners were no longer in the official and
unofficial detention facilities in and around Kirkuk when Iraqi federal forces
regained control of the area on October 16, 2017.
The judiciaries of the Iraqi government and the KRG are relying
on their respective counterterrorism courts to rapidly prosecute all of these
ISIS suspects on charges brought under their counterterrorism laws, primarily
and often exclusively on the charge of membership in ISIS, with no distinction
made for the severity of the charges brought against suspects and no effort to
prioritize the prosecution of the worst offenses. One Iraqi judge at the
Nineveh counterterrorism court, which is mandated to prosecute ISIS members
captured in Mosul, said that between February and late August 2017, the court
had commenced trials against 5,500 ISIS suspects, and convicted and sentenced
at least 200.
Human
Rights Watch knows of at least 7,374 individuals that the Iraqi and KRG
judiciaries are trying or have convicted and in 92 cases already executed since
2014, while recognizing that this represents a fraction of the total number of
individuals held as ISIS suspects.
