Amnesty: Displaced targeted in Iraq, criminal justice system 'critically flawed'

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – A report released on Tuesday by a leading international human rights organization was strongly critical of Iraq’s security forces and criminal justice system and pointed out various dangers faced by internally displaced persons (IDPs) in much of the country.

“Those who managed to return to their areas of origin said they were subjected to forced displacement, evictions, arrests, looting of their homes, house demolitions, threats, sexual abuse and harassment, and discrimination,” read the chapter on Iraq in Amnesty International’s 2018 report of Middle East and North African nations, in reference to IDP families with perceived or suspected connections to the Islamic State.

Various security forces, including Iran-backed Hashd al-Shaabi (PMF) militias, “regularly arrested and forcibly disappeared” civilians, it added.

“A committee established by the prime minister’s office in June 2016 to look into the abduction and forcible disappearance by PMU militias of 643 men and boys from Saqlawiya in Anbar governorate had still not publicly released any findings by the end of 2018.”

Following an arrest, it continued, Iraqi suspects often face indefinite detention in a criminal justice system that remains “critically flawed,” a critique more and more commonly used by international organizations writing about the embattled nation struggling to deal with the fallout of decades of armed conflict.

Those imprisoned in Iraq were denied the right to an adequate defense and were often compelled to “confess” under duress, the London-based watchdog charged.

“Courts continued to admit torture-tainted evidence and convict individuals under the Anti-Terrorism Law, more often than not resulting in death sentences. Security officers threatened and, in some cases, arrested lawyers in court.”

The government’s response to demonstrations that spread throughout Iraq’s central and southern provinces between July and September also featured prominently, with several deaths being described as the use of “excessive force.”

“In Baghdad, security forces arbitrarily arrested and detained protesters. They beat and used electroshock devices against detained protesters, interrogated them and forced them to sign papers without disclosing their contents, before releasing them,” the report revealed.

Though most of the report dealt with areas and forces under the control of the central government, it addressed incidents in the Kurdistan Region as well, writing that “Kurdish security forces and armed individuals in civilian clothes violently dispersed peaceful protests in Erbil and Dohuk in March.”

It also stated, “Those detained by central Iraqi and Kurdish forces were routinely tortured and subjected to other forms of ill-treatment during interrogation, often to extract ‘confessions,’” and that “former detainees reported witnessing other detainees die as a result of such abuse.”

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany