ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - An Iraqi officer from an elite unit of the country’s security forces was arrested after recently published documents revealed that he is directly involved in an incident that led to the murder of at least 30 protestors in southern Iraq.
In new statements published on End Impunity in Iraq’s (EII) Telegram channel, which works on raising awareness on Iraqi human rights violations, Omar Nazar is seen as the perpetrator of deadly atrocities committed against protestors during large-scale demonstrations that called for reform and change almost three years ago. He has been previously accused of committing heinous crimes against civilians during the Islamic State (ISIS) battle.
Nazar is a member of Iraq’s Emergency Response Division (ERD), a special force branch that answers to the Iraqi interior ministry and had a leading role in the fight against ISIS in Mosul. The unit was blacklisted by the US in March of 2015 as there was “credible information” that it was committing gross violations of human rights, ABC News reported.
The statements obtained by EII seem to be written confessions from Nazar’s fellow officers, revealing that Nazar had ordered the police and security forces to fire live ammunition at the protestors who had blocked the main thoroughfare of al-Nasr and al-Zaytoon bridges in Iraq’s Nasiriyah city in November of 2019.
The revelation angered Iraqis and social media users as hundreds of families were shattered after the brutal murder of their loved ones during the large-scale protests, dubbed Tishreen (October) movement, that called for an end to corruption, unemployment, and the provision of basic services almost three years ago. The protestors were met with excessive violence, tear gas canisters, and live bullets.
The hashtag #HoldOmarAccountable circulated on Twitter, leading to the announcement of his arrest by Iraqi Security Media Cell.
EII on Friday said in a statement that it will continue to monitor Nazar’s case and will “persist” in its endeavors to hold him, his accomplices and their superiors accountable.
“We would like to clarify that this officer [Nazar] is now in detention and a legal committee from the interior ministry has been formed to investigate the accusations against him,” the cell said in a tweet on Friday.
Rudaw English reached out to Amnesty International for a comment regarding Nazar’s case but was not immediately available.
Written confessions
The Iraqi military authorities had planned to deploy forces in attempts of reopening the bridges protestors had closed at 5:00 am in the morning, but they withdrew from the scene two hours later due to the huge number of protestors, ERD’s major-general Mahdi al-Hayali said in his written statement.
Nazar gave the order to start “indirect” shooting at protestors after his guards informed him that they were insulting the military group, according to another military official’s statement.
At least 30 protestors were killed and over 200 were injured in one night, marking the al-Zaytoon massacre.
“The massacre happened under Omar Nazar’s command,” Bilal al-Ramith said. “I had not seen such intense firing, not even in the battle to liberate Mosul,” he added, describing the bloodbath.
With the Iraqi flag pinned to his chest, Nazar has grown a reputation for committing crimes against the people he promised to protect and on the land he vowed to keep safe.
The new documents “made us recall his [Nazar] previous crimes and call for him to be held accountable for all the crimes he committed,” EII told Rudaw English on Wednesday.
Absolute impunity for Iraqi forces
The Iraqi security forces that have allegedly enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings of demonstrators, activists, and journalists since the protests broke out, are still acting with impunity. However, the government has often claimed that such grave crimes are only committed by a few people acting independently and outside of its control.
Forty-eight incidents of attempted or targeted killings of protesters and critics were documented by The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) between October 1, 2019, and May 15, 2021. At least 32 died and 21 were injured as a result of assassinations, while 20 protesters who were abducted by militias remain missing.
Iranian-backed militias, including factions of the Popular Mobilization forces (PMF or Hashd al-Shaabi in Arabic), are widely blamed for the assassination attacks. The EII alleges that Nazar has close ties with ERD commander Thamir al-Husseini, who is affiliated with the armed Badr Organization and other Iranian militias.
Human Rights Watch (HRW), among other rights organizations, has been documenting grave abuses committed by the Iraqi forces for years but have not seen fundamental changes that ensure the punishment of the abuses.
“We haven’t seen a change in the behavior of armed forces,” Belkis Wille, senior crisis and conflict researcher at HRW told Rudaw English on Monday.
There has been no serious accountability as “we haven’t seen any fundamental changes to the system, to ensure that abuses go punished instead of going unpunished,” Wille added.
In an over nine-minute video, published by EII last week, Nazar appears to be forcing confessions out of suspected ISIS members, beating up civilians, stealing, and allegedly raping the wives of detainees, all during the ERD’s fight against the terror group.
Iraq’s security forces have also been committing crimes against civilians.
An Iraqi court on Sunday sentenced a police officer and an informant over a deadly operation, launched under the pretext of pursuing suspected terrorists, which left 20 people from the same family dead.
Claiming that "Iran and Iran-aligned militias continue to have strong ties to some elements of Iraq’s traditional security forces," Operation Inherent Resolve's most recent quarterly report to the US Congress makes a tacit admission that Iran controls and directs large swaths of Iraq’s security infrastructure.
