Informants and interrogations crucial to Mosul advance
MOSUL, Iraq: Identification cards and cell phones in hand, dozens of Iraqi men and boys trudge down a dusty road in eastern Mosul towards intelligence officials waiting apprehensively outside the neighbourhood mosque.
“Stop! Stop where you are!” an Iraqi police officer calls out to the group as he nervously pats down the first arrivals to check for weapons or suicide vests.
At noon on Friday, instead of weekly prayers, the men were herded into the mosque in the Karkukli district for questioning by federal police and the CounterTerrorism Service’s intelligence branch.
Iraqi forces are pressing a month-long offensive to seize the Islamic State group stronghold of Mosul.
After seizing a neighbourhood, they gather males aged 13 and older at local mosques or schools to press them for information about the jihadist group.
“If you have names, give them to us. If you have any information, we want it,” the policeman shouts as the line grows longer.
About 30 men are ushered into the mosque as the others are told to crouch down in single file.
One resident is ordered to pull his trousers down to prove he is not wearing a belt of explosives. He stands with his arms extended, a cigarette hanging from his mouth.
Once inside the mosque’s courtyard, residents hand their ID cards and phones to three intelligence officers hunched over laptops. The officials check the names against lists of suspected IS fighters, and scroll through text messages for potentially incriminating information.
“We took their papers and they will be called up by their IDs one by one,” says Major Alaa Abdel Omran of the CTS’s intelligence branch.
“If he doesn’t have a terrorist background then he will be let go and he can go home,” he tells AFP.
Most of the men are released after a few minutes, pressed by Iraqi officers on their way out to tell journalists that the questioning process is gentle and fair.
But one man is escorted from the mosque by federal police, his face covered and pulling on a sweatsuit emblazoned with the CTS logo over his own clothes. — AFP