In a statement issued on July 5 condemning the suicide truck bombing in the Karrada neighbourhood of Baghdad, which killed 250 according to the most recent information from the health ministry, Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, warned that “acts of revenge and hasty, injudicious policy decisions in reaction to such attacks are simply helping ISIL [Islamic State, ISIS] carry out its strategy to divide societies and promote hatred.”
“ISIL needs to be defeated, and defeated soon,” he said. “But in trying to defeat them, we must be extra careful not to react to their provocations in the way they predict we will react and want us to react. We need not just to be stronger than they are, but cleverer than they are. And in this we are failing badly, not just in Iraq but in a variety of responses all over the world, enabling them to tap into resentments about heavy-handed or unlawful responses to recruit more followers, create more fanatics and suicide bombers.”
In the immediate days after the Karrada attack, Iraqis have accused the government of failing to protect civilians and allowing such attacks to occur, one minister has resigned, and five prisoners have been executed in an apparent act of retaliation.
On Tuesday, one day after the massive suicide bombing in Karrada, Baghdad, the Iraqi Ministry of Justice announced that it had executed five prisoners that morning and was taking measures to speed up the implementation of death sentences.
The Ministry’s statement offered condolences to the families of the victims and all Iraqi people and said, “We would like to demonstrate to them [the Iraqi people] that their brothers in the Ministry of Justice are involved in carrying out justice, including on those whose hands are stained with the blood of Iraqis and we do not relent.”
The statement added that the executions were carried out after a presidential decree was issued on the matter and on the consent of the public prosecutor.
Also on Tuesday, the Interior Minister, Mohamed al-Ghaban, submitted his resignation. Before leaving his office, he said the truck bomb had originated in Diyala province, north of Baghdad, and that checkpoints in the capital are “absolutely useless.”
Zeid warned that ISIS will seek to carry out more attacks like the one on Karrada as the group continues to lose on the battlefront and especially as the operation to liberate Mosul approaches. ISIS will “seek to make Iraq implode once more,” through stoking sectarian tensions, Zeid said.
Addressing the fears of sectarian war that have grown following the alleged abuse of Shiite militias against the Sunni population of Fallujah, Zeid urged Iraqi authorities to immediately find and free the more than 600 boys and men from the city who disappeared, reportedly abducted and tortured by the Kataaib Hezbollah militia group.
“These crimes are not only abhorrent,” Zeid said. “They are also wholly counterproductive. They give ISIL a propaganda victory, and push people into their arms. They increase the likelihood of a renewed cycle of full-throttle sectarian violence.”
