Country: Iraq
ICHR strongly calls on Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi’s government to publicly condemn the use of torture, and to show the Iraqi People through strong actions that the government is serious about ending torture in Iraq’s detention facilities.
Iraqi officers at a detention facility in the onetime jihadist stronghold of Mosul have continued to torture detainees despite rights defenders efforts to intervene.
Early this year new torture allegations was reported by the rights defenders, at the Faisaliya prison in northern Iraq, around six months after publishing a report on what it said “ torture and abuses are occurring in Faisaliya prison and in two nearby facilities.”
The rights group said they had reached out about last year’s allegations to the Iraqi premier’s office, the foreign ministry and the interior ministry, yet they where left without response.
“Since the Iraqi government ignores credible reports of torture, it’s creating platform for abuse and torture. It also shows their own human rights violation by not taking any action.” Said Ardeshir Zarezadeh, Executive Director for Iran, and The Middle East at ICHR Canada.
Faisaliya detainee described that the guards are beating groups of naked detainees on their feet with plastic piping until they confessed to being affiliated with the Islamic State jihadist group.
The prisoner also said that the guards waterboarded detainees and suspended them from the ceiling with their hands tied behind their backs.
Faisaliya is located in eastern Mosul, the battered Iraqi city that was IS’s de facto capital for three years before security forces recaptured it in late 2017.
Iraq has since trialed thousands of its own citizens, as well as hundreds of foreigners, for affiliation to IS.
But rights defender groups say the accused are often detained on lofty or circumstantial evidence, their trials do not guarantee due process, torture in prison.
ICHR condemns torturing as it’s a serious crime against human rights standards. With numerous credible reports of torture and abuses the government has not taken any action towards them. The Iraqi government must answer, why they are not taking the torture allegations seriously?