Iraq pressed on troop-abuses inquiries

BAGHDAD — The Iraqi government was called on by a top United Nations official Thursday to speed up investigations into allegations of human-rights violations committed by security forces during the fight against the Islamic State group and to make the results of those probes public.

Since 2014, the U.S.-backed Iraqi forces’ fight against the Sunni militant group has been mired in violations committed by government forces and paramilitaries that international human-rights groups have decried as war crimes, ranging from extrajudicial killings of Islamic State suspects to forced displacement and detention of civilians.

Last Friday, Iraqi forces drove Islamic State militants from the last Iraqi town near the Syrian borders more than three years after the militant group stormed nearly a third of Iraqi territory, keeping the militants scattered in a wide desert area to the west and north of Baghdad.

Concluding an official visit to Iraq, Agnes Callamard, the U.N.’s special investigator on extrajudicial executions, stressed to the Iraqi officials on “the importance of translating the military defeat over [the Islamic State] into victories for accountability and over impunity.”

The Iraqi government has previously acknowledged some of the allegations, but insisted that these were “individual acts” and promised to investigate them and punish the perpetrators. No outcomes have been published by the government on these investigations.

AP/KARIM KADIM Agnes Callamard, the U.N.’s special investigator on extrajudicial executions, speaks to reporters in Baghdad on Thursday.