Iraqi ‘celebrity’ Shia militant threatens Erdogan

A well-known Iraqi militant who fights for the Shia-dominated Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) has threatened to “pop [Turkish soldiers] in the head” if Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan insists on maintaining forces in Iraq.

In a video uploaded to YouTube earlier this week, Ayub Faleh Al-Rubaie, better known by his nom de guerre “Abu Azrael”, described Erdogan as a “monkey” and a “rabbit”, and directly threatened Turkish soldiers stationed in Bashiqa in northern Iraq.

“By Hussein, if we put you in our minds, not a single rat, not a rat who works in Iraq, will remain,” Abu Azrael said, referring to the Turkish soldiers as rodents.

Turkey has a small military presence of 150 soldiers and 25 tanks in Bashiqa where it is training Sunni Arabs, Turkmens and allied Kurdish Peshmerga forces in a mission it has said is designed to prepare forces to combat Daesh.

Visibly angry as he talks to the camera, Abu Azrael said: “[I’m not talking about] kidnapping them, no. [They’ll be shot] in the head, popped and they will disappear, like dogs.”

“We have men who will eat faces, I swear to God,” Abu Azrael concluded.

Abu Azrael has been accused of committing atrocities against Sunnis he claims were Daesh fighters.

In late 2015, Abu Azrael was filmed slicing strips of flesh from a charred and burnt corpse of an alleged fighter “like shawarma”, in reference to the popular Arabian fast food similar to a Turkish doner kebab.

Others have been known to commit atrocities and abuses, such as an Iraqi female leader of a small Shia militia who was reported by The Independent as “[decapitating Daesh] fighters and [cooking] their heads”.

Mutilation of bodies is a violation of the Geneva Convention and the laws of war, and is also a breach of customary international law.