Horror of Mosul prison after Isil is rooted out
Iraq risks falling back into sectarian violence as Shia soldiers slake their thirst for revenge on Sunni minority
Shocking images emerged from Mosul showing what appears to be more than 100 men and boys, many of whom are emaciated, crammed into a makeshift detention centre. A guard said prisons had been overwhelmed as Isil fighters were cleared from the last neighbourhoods of the city.
FIRST came the bodies, discovered bound and blindfolded at the side of the road. Then came the photographs of young men being strung up by their wrists and whipped.
As the battle for the Iraqi city of Mosul neared its end, torture and killing became more brazen and seemingly more vengeful.
Soldiers were seen in one video hurling suspected Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) fighters off a cliff before shooting them as they lay prone on the ground. “This is what they did to my cousin,” said one of the soldiers.
The latest shocking pictures to emerge appear to show more than 100 men and boys, many of whom are badly emaciated, crammed shoulder-toshoulder in subhuman conditions on the floor of a makeshift detention centre outside Mosul. There is no light or ventilation, despite daytime temperatures reaching well over 113F (45C) in northern Iraq in summer.
One guard told Associated Press, whose photographer gained access to the site, that they were holding 370 prisoners. He said authorities had been overwhelmed with detainees as Isil fighters were cleared from the last neighbourhoods of the city.
“Prisoners are infected with diseases, lots of health and skin problems,” he said. “The majority can’t walk. Their legs are swollen because they can’t move.”
One inmate claimed he had spent the past six months at the centre, only once seeing sunlight. “You won’t find 10 real [Isil members] among these guys. And all of them have spent more than six months here,” he said.
“They said my name was in their database. I haven’t seen any court or judge. I don’t even know what I’m accused of. A lot of names are the same,” he said, adding that two prisoners had died in the packed holding cell. The Us-backed nine-month campaign for Mosul has become mired in atrocities committed by government forces and paramilitaries that international rights groups have decried as war crimes, ranging from extrajudicial killings of Isil suspects to forced displacement and detention of civilians.
A thirst for vengeance in the wake of military victories is fuelling the violence.
Haider al-abadi, Iraq’s prime minister, finally addressed the issue on Tuesday, warning that any soldier caught carrying out such “individual acts” would be punished accordingly. But some had taken the lengthy silence from Baghdad as tacit consent. The images of Sunni men being abused by mostly Shia soldiers is more potent propaganda for Isil than any of its own videos. They risked tipping Iraq back into the cycles of sectarian violence that had plagued the country for over a decade, said Belkis Wille, Iraq researcher with Human Rights Watch. Isil was able to attract recruits in the past by drawing on people’s anger over perceived persecution of the minority by the army in the form of arbitrary detentions, torture and extrajudicial killings, she said.
If abuses continued, “all you’re going to see is [that] young Sunni Arab men are going to want to join whatever the next extremist group looks like”.