Death squads dish out vengeance
IRAQ: The death squad arrived by ambulance. It was 10pm. They drove through the village of Johaniye on the west bank of the Tigris River, straight to the home of the mosque’s prayer caller, the muezzin. Six uniformed armed men leapt from the vehicle and dragged him from his house. They ripped the clothes from his body and began to hit him.
‘‘They beat my son so hard that I could hear him screaming from my own home the other side of the road,’’ said the muezzin’s father, Salman Musla Abdullah, 65. ‘‘They took their time. They were in no hurry.’’
A group of the village’s local defence force, Sunnis from the Hashd al-Sha’ari volunteer militia, rushed to the muezzin’s assistance, but were shooed away by the men in the ambulance.
‘‘This is not your business,’’ the squad’s leader told them.
Then the muezzin was thrown into the ambulance and driven away. That was the last time that Ali Salman Musla Abdullah, 39, was seen alive.
Burnt bodies were dumped by the roadside days later. Ali Salman’s family feared one might be his. Yet no one touched the corpses, whose appearance near villages in the Tigris valley south of Mosul is now commonplace.
Vengeance killings of suspected Islamic State (Isis) members and collaborators, together with evictions of families accused of Isis affiliation, threaten to inflame sectarian and tribal tensions even before Iraqi forces consolidate their victory in Mosul.
In this climate of retribution, locals are afraid even to be associated with burying the body of a suspected Isis member. ‘‘We don’t touch any of the bodies dumped nearby,’’ explained the son of the village sheikh, Qusai Ahmed Mahmoud. ‘‘They are not our business and we do not go near them.’’
Ali Salman, whose family said he was never a member of Isis, became one of the disappeared four weeks before Iraqi forces began their final operation to clear Mosul’s Old City of Isis fighters. He had been arrested in April, and was investigated for involvement with the group, but released after four weeks, and cleared of any guilt, according to his court documents.
Yet the trend of abduction, murder and the displacement of anyone suspected of having a family member in Isis, or serving the caliphate in even the most banal administrative capacity, is fast gaining pace.
‘‘It happens every 10 days or so. We have no idea who the bodies are, or who is dumping them,’’ said Mohammed Fadhil, a local militia commander. ‘‘We don’t get involved in the matter.’’
Sunni tribal leaders in Nineveh district, of which Mosul is the provincial capital, estimate that 10-15 per cent of the majority Sunni population here were involved with Isis in some way, either linked through a family member or employment. Across the whole of Iraq, Sunnis are a minority at about 40 per cent of the population, which is at least 55 per cent Shia.
On Tuesday, reports of a surge in abuse, including displacement and eviction, prompted the UN high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, to warn that the situation could spark violence. ‘‘Horrific though the crimes of Isis are, there is no place for vengeance,’’ Prince Zeid said in Geneva. ‘‘Such punishments are an act of vengeance that works against national reconciliation and social cohesion.’’
Police officers in Hammam alAlil, a town 25km south of Mosul, whose area of responsibility includes Johaniye, said abductions and killings of Isis collaborators had increased sharply in the past two months.
‘‘We get reports of between two and three abductions from villages using an ambulance per week,’’ explained one senior officer, speaking on condition of anonymity. ‘‘And those are just the ones we know about. Most people are too afraid to report the disappearance of a family member.’’
Both Shia and Sunni anti-Isis militias are suspected of the killings, using ambulances to pass freely through checkpoints.
‘‘It is not Isis fighters who are the targets,’’ the officer added, ‘‘They are already dead or have gone. It’s their family members, or anyone suspected of doing a job for the caliphate. We file reports on the killings but every one of them says ‘assailants unknown’.’’
Eviction of Isis families is widespread, often with the implicit collusion of the authorities. A month ago the council in Gayarrah drew up a list of 67 Isis families due for eviction.
Most of these ‘‘Isis families’’ consist of just a widow and children, and grenade attacks and ‘‘night letters’’ – written threats left at doorways overnight – are commonly used to evict them.
In Salahiye, a village near Hammam al-Alil, every Isis widow except one had been forced out. Their homes had been burnt, or forcibly requisitioned by militiamen.Graffiti encouraged no return: ‘‘This is the house of Daesh [Isis] dogs,’’ read one scrawl.
‘‘If it was down to me I’d kill every last one of the Daesh families,’’ said an Emergency Police Battalion unit commander, Colonel Mohammed Aswad, a Shia Turkoman from Tal Afar.
‘‘They are the seeds of Isis, and there is no place for them here.’’
The Times