Trials bring swift verdicts, almost all guilty
TEL KEIF, IRAQ» The entire trial lasted just over half an hour. A grey-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 this week. He said he had worked for Nineveh province’s water department for more than 20 years and stayed at his post when IS took over in 2014, but he denied ever swearing allegiance to the group.
“All government employees continued in their jobs at the water facility,” the 47year-old Sunni Arab protested.
“I am asking you to speak only about yourself,” the judge interrupted him. 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 IS member was ushered in.
Iraq is holding huge numbers of detainees on suspicion of ties to the Islamic State group — around 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.
The Associated Press last week attended several trials being held in Tel Keif, north of Mosul.
Throughout the system, the trials are usually short, often less than 30 minutes, 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.
Moreover, even limited involvement with IS can bring harsh punishment. 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.”
The swift, truncated sessions reflect in part how Iraq’s judicial system has been overwhelmed by the influx of detained IS suspects. 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.
Many Iraqis are also thirsty for quick retribution against a group that was notorious for its atrocities.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who is running to retain his position in national elections next month, has repeatedly called for death sentences to be sped up. Since 2013, more than 3,000 people convicted on terror charges have been sentenced to death, according to a spreadsheet of Iraqi prison inmates analyzed by the AP. Since 2014, about 250 executions have been carried out. On April 16, the government announced it had executed 11 militants.
The heavy-handed, broadbrush crackdown in the courts threatens to further alienate Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority. Sunnis were the main community living under the Islamic State group’s rule, both its recruiting base and its victims.
Some actively supported the group, joining its ranks as fighters or taking up significant positions in the government it created. But tens of thousands more worked with the group because they had no choice.