KURDISH FORCES IN IRAQ ACCUSED OF TORTURING TEENAGE BOYS
▶ Kurdistan Regional Government rejects Human Rights Watch report on youths with suspected links to ISIS
Kurdish security forces in Iraq continue to use torture on teenage boys accused of being affiliated with ISIS, a rights watchdog said two years after it first made the accusations.
In a report published yesterday, Human Rights Watch said boys held in Kurdistan Regional Government centres in northern Iraq who were suspected of links to the extremist group had been beaten, given electric shocks and held in stress positions to force them to confess.
The regional government, which controls an autonomous area of northern Iraq, has denied the allegations.
“Nearly two years after the Kurdistan Regional Government promised to investigate the torture of child detainees it is still occurring with alarming frequency,” said Joe Becker, children’s rights advocacy director at the watchdog.
“The Kurdistan authorities should immediately end all torture of child detainees and investigate those responsible.”
After holding a front line against ISIS since 2014, the regional government has taken thousands of suspected supporters into custody.
Many were arrested at checkpoints while crossing into Kurdish areas, while others were from camps for displaced Iraqis.
The group interviewed 20 boys aged between 14 and 17 who were charged or convicted of ISIS affiliation and were held at a reformatory in Erbil, capital of the Kurdistan region, and three boys who had been released.
Of the 23 boys interviewed, 16 said that before being moved to the reformatory they had been tortured by Kurdish Asayish security forces. Four more boys said they were threatened with torture if they did not confess.
Two of the boys said they had worked for ISIS and one said he had been a fighter. The rest denied involvement with the group, although some said family members had been involved.
One of the boys said he was tortured by Asayish officers for three days after he was detained at a checkpoint in 2017, when he was 16.
“They bound my hands behind my back, one from above and one below,” the boy told the monitor.
“They beat me with a stick and they gave me five to 10 electric shocks.”
After three days of mistreatment, the boy said he confessed after being coached by the officers to say he served ISIS for two months. He said it was untrue.
Most of the boys said they did not have access to a lawyer and were forced to sign confessions they were not allowed to read.
A spokesman for the government rejected the report.
“The KRG fully disagrees with the accusation of torture of children ISIS detainees in the KRG region,” Dindar Zebari, the government’s co-ordinator for international advocacy, told
The National. “We have to rehabilitate them. This is the policy of the KRG.”
When the watchdog reported on claims of forced disappearances and the torture of juve nile prisoners in 2017, Kurdish authorities promised an investigation.
This time Mr Zebari said there was no need for a further investigation because the government rejected the allegations.
“The KRG has already put all its efforts from the first day to make a distinction between adults and those under 18 in terms of ISIS detainees in the Kurdistan Region,” he said.
Measures designed to protect children being held in facilities included keeping minors in separate facilities from adults, and giving them “full access” to family members, lawyers and non-government organisations.
“These policies are fully in place,” Mr Zebari said. “Under our investigation committees, we have not had accusations addressed to specific names, places or authorities, or even specific events.’
The monitor said the government had failed to engage with their report.
“The responses that we continue to get to these allegations don’t suggest that there is any will whatsoever in reading the report carefully or engaging in our findings,” said Belkis Wille, its senior Iraq researcher.
That juvenile prisoners were supposed to be held in separate facilities did not disprove the allegations, Ms Wille said.
“We said in the report that the torture occurred while in the custody of the Asayish, before the prisoners were taken to the reformatory,” she said.
The rights organisation also contested Mr Zebari’s claim that children detained were allowed to see their families.
“Staff at the reformatory confirmed to us that they restrict children’s access to phone calls and families, based on the orders of the Asayish,” Ms Wille said.
The government’s response appeared to be “a wilful choice to misrepresent our findings”, she said.
Mr Becker said: “Many of these children have already been scarred by conflict and ISIS abuses.
“Instead of achieving justice, torture and coerced confessions only compound their suffering and contribute to further grievances.”