Executions of ‘ ISIS brides’

When it was reported last year that the Iraqi authorities were holding 1,400 foreign women and children related to fighters of the militant Islamic State group, one Army official said, “( W) e discovered that almost all of them were misled by a vicious Daesh propaganda”. Many were also tricked or forced into joining their militant husbands in Iraq. Yet, dozens of women are now being sentenced to hang for being ISIS “members”... It is not just women who are being arbitrarily prosecuted. Human Rights Watch notes that the process of trying men and boys for ISIS affiliation often relies on dubious tips motivated by enmity, or on confessions extracted through torture...

Along with claims that relatives of ISIS suspects are being denied documentation such as birth certificates, it amounts to little more than collective punishment — retribution that harms women in particular. It is arguable whether such trials should even take place in the criminal courts instead of a UN- backed tribunal. There must be a review of charges and corresponding punishments based on actual acts of collaboration rather than tenuous links of complicity. And while some returnees might pose security risks to the countries from which they came, this cannot be a reason for the world to ignore their plight and stall the need for deradicalising repatriation programmes... — Dawn, Pakistan