Crammed in squalid jail, IS fighters seized after battle for Mosul
HUDDLED shoulder to shoulder on the floor of a prison in Iraq, these are suspected Islamic State fighters.
The captives are being held in stifling conditions near war-ravaged Mosul, recently liberated from the terror group.
They are forced to sit on the floor in 45C heat with no electricity or ventilation in a facility housing 370 prisoners.
Iraq’s authorities were overwhelmed with detainees as Iraqi forces cleared the last neighbourhoods of the city earlier this month at the end of a gruelling campaign.
The Iraqi officer overseeing the jail asked not to be named but said: ‘Prisoners are infected with diseases, lots of health and skin problems, because they’re not exposed to the sun. The majority can’t walk. Their legs are swollen because they can’t move.’ One captive said two prisoners had died, adding: ‘We really want to die. None of us have received any visitors, relatives, family members. They don’t even know where we are.’
About 1,150 detainees have passed through the prison in the last three months, with 540 sent to Baghdad for further investigation, the officer said.
Another 2,800 prisoners are being held at the Qayyarah air base south of Mosul, and hundreds more in other facilities.
Evidence of the prison emerged amid claims that Iraqi troops committed human rights abuses retaking the second city in a battle lasting more than eight months.
A video that emerged last week showed troops in Mosul throwing suspects from a high wall next to the Tigris River, then shooting their bodies.
Iraq’s prime minister Haider al-Abadi acknowledged that human rights violations took place during the battle but insisted they were ‘individual acts’ for which the perpetrators would be punished. IS fighters were notorious for atrocities, both against civilians and Iraqi security forces – including beheadings, crucifixions and rapes.
The thirst for vengeance in the wake of Iraq’s military victory has fuelled extrajudicial killings of IS members.
When IS overran Mosul and large parts of northern and western Iraq in 2014, they specifically targeted the military and security forces and their families for brutal atrocities.
Near Tikrit, IS massacred some 1,700 captured military recruits and buried them in mass graves that have since been uncovered. The terror group seized Mosul when it swept across northern and central Iraq in the summer of 2014.
‘We want to die’