ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Iraq’s highest judiciary authority on Monday began looking into cases of “disappeared,” predominantly Sunni men who are believed to have gone missing after being detained at Iraqi checkpoints during anti-ISIS operations, amid sustained demands by Sunni politicians to investigate the matter.
Fayeq Zeidan, head of the Supreme Judicial Council, met with Iraq’s Chief Prosecutor Mowfaq al-Obeidi and the head of the Judiciary Supervisory Board Jassim al-Omeiri to discuss “what has been invoked lately concerning missing or (disappeared) individuals,” according to a Council readout released on Monday.
The missing persons were detained at checkpoints manned by Iraqi security forces and the predominantly Shiite Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, known in Arabic as Hashd al-Shaabi) during liberation operations against Islamic State (ISIS).
The judiciary said in its statement that it had previously received a list of names of those missing from Sunni MP and former vice president of Iraq Osamah al-Nujaifi.
“Investigative courts have been instructed, based on their geographical specialty, to receive complaints about them and undertake all legal measure to reveal their fate,” said the statement.
Among proposed measures are the visits of judges and public prosecutors to locations where missing individuals are purportedly detained, to “ascertain their fate in cooperation with specialized security authorities.”
Decades of war, genocidal campaigns by Iraq’s Baath regime, and most recently the war against ISIS have stacked Iraq’s missing persons count.
"The number of the missing is large and has exceeded hundreds of thousands [of individuals]," International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Iraq spokesperson Salma Oudam told Rudaw on August 29, the International Day of the Disappeared.
The stepping in of the judiciary has occurred as Sunni demands for answers on their missing continue to escalate.
According to the Nujaifi-headed Iraqi Qarar (Decision) Alliance, more than 12,000 Sunnis who were displaced from their homes in 2015 and 2016 are now missing.
“Governmental steps to reveal their fates [of the missing] remain shy and do not level up to the size of violations that constitute a crime against humanity,” Qarar said in a September 5 statement.
“Judicial authorities have to fulfill their role in criminal investigations and follow up on the crimes that constitute a flagrant violation of human rights,” added the alliance.
Prominent Sunni politician Mashan al-Jabouri threatened to take the matter to the international community if authorities fail to reveal the fate of the missing.
“Those who believe the advocates of the case of the disappeared and detained can be silenced through threats, silencers, or bribes with positions, are deluded,” Jabouri said in a September 7 tweet.
Speaking to Rudaw TV on September 3, Jabouri defended am absence of Sunni political demand for answers on the disappeared during the May 12, 2018 parliamentary elections because Iraq had just freshly defeated ISIS.
“The acts of arresting thousands [of Sunni individuals] at checkpoints was done mainly by armed Hashd [al-Shaabi] factions, some of which admit to being part of Hashd al-Shaabi Commission while some others don’t,” Jabouri said.
“Those arrested are civilians who resided in areas during liberation operations, with no ties to Daesh,” claimed Jabouri, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS. “I consider not paying attention to the case of the disappeared, or mentioning them, or demanding the disclosure of their fate to be another crime, and shameful,” he added.
On August 13, the bodies of 31 “unidentified individuals” were buried by Hashd al-Shaabi in a Karbala cemetery without the performance of DNA testing or any other identity confirmation procedure. It is suspected that those buried were detained and later executed by the Shiite paramilitaries.
