37 civilians forcibly disappeared by Iraqi authorities

Iraqi and Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) forces have abducted 37 men from areas around Mosul and nearby Hawija and are now holding them incommunicado after accusing them of being affiliated with Daesh, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported today.

HRW spoke to 46 relatives and witnesses who described how the men were taken after being stopped at security checkpoints and other places such as villages and even refugee camps for internally displaced people (IDPs).

The men were reportedly being held in undisclosed locations, and were assumed to have been forbidden from contacting their families due to the lack of contact.

The people HRW interviewed individually and in groups had recently escaped from Daesh-held areas near Mosul and Hawija.

The interviews were conducted in the Jadah camp for displaced persons, 65 kilometers south of Mosul and under the control of Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), and the Zlikan camp near Bashiqa, 43 kilometers northeast of Mosul and under the control of the KRG’s security forces.

Those interviewed in both camps consistently said that detainees held by both Iraqi and KRG forces had not been able to contact them and that in many cases they did not know where the detainees were being held.

Even in one instance in which family members knew that their loved ones were being held in the building where they had been screened, the detainees had been denied the right to communicate with the family members or even with a lawyer, relatives said.

On 27 October, HRW issued a report on the screening procedure that displaced men and boys from Daesh-held territory at the Debaga screening centre and camp, in KRG-controlled territory. It found that KRG forces have detained men and boys ages 15 and over for indefinite periods stretching from weeks to months, even after they pass an initial security check for possible ties to Daesh.

While being screened, detainees told HRW that they were denied access to lawyers and detained even in the absence of evidence that they are not individually suspected of a crime.

Enforced disappearances, which occur when security forces detain and then conceal the fate or whereabouts of a detainee, placing them outside the protection of the law, are violations of international human rights law and can be international crimes.

Depriving detainees of any contact with the outside world and refusing to give family members any information about their fate or whereabouts can qualify their detentions as enforced disappearances.