Strained courts struggle to cope with detainees
TEL KEIF, Iraq — The entire trial lasted just over half an hour. A gray-haired man was led into the defendant’s booth. He fidgeted as the judge read the charges against him: Swearing allegiance to the Islamic State group and working for the militants as an employee at a water station.
“Not guilty,” the defendant, Abdullah al-Jabouri, told the judge in a session of one of Iraq’s counterterrorism courts last week. He said he had worked for Nineveh province’s water department for more than 20 years and stayed at his post when the militants took over in 2014, but he denied ever swearing allegiance to the group.
Soon after, the judge and his two associates went into deliberations. A few minutes later they returned with their verdict: Guilty, sentenced to 15 years in prison. Al-Jabouri, his head bowed, was quickly led out and the next accused Islamic State member was ushered in.
Iraq is holding huge numbers of detainees on suspicion of ties to the Islamic State group — about 11,000, according to Iraqi officials — and they are being rushed through counterterrorism courts in trials that raise questions over whether justice is being done. At the same time, families are often left in the dark about where their loved ones are being detained or what their fates are.
Throughout the system, the trials are usually short, and most end with guilty verdicts. Convictions are based on confessions that defendants and rights groups say intelligence agents extract by intimidation, torture and abuse. Also used as evidence are reports from anonymous informants, raising the possibility of false accusations made as revenge against rivals. The same defense lawyer works dozens of cases, with little knowledge of the defendants.
Under Iraq’s terror law, only three punishments are permitted — 15 years in prison, life imprisonment or execution by hanging. All verdicts are reviewed by Iraq’s Supreme Court.
“The system is built on an unjust foundation,” said one defense lawyer, Mahfoudh Hamad Ismael. “These suspects’ cases are done and finished the first day they enter a security detention center or an intelligence facility.”
Rights groups have long criticized Iraqi courts, saying they struggle to uphold due process. Now they must work through thousands captured in broad sweeps carried out as Iraqi forces retook the northern city of Mosul last year.