The killings, assassinations and kidnappings of civil society activists, targeting of protesters in sit-in squares, and attacks on peaceful demonstrations continues in Iraq, including the Kurdistan region of Iraq. In its eighth periodic report, the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) documents the continuing violations of human rights in Iraq, including protests calling for measures to ensure upcoming elections will be free and fair. This is part one.

The series of repeated assassinations, continuous targeting and serious threats have led many of the leaders of the ongoing popular movement, including civil society activists, in addition to journalists, to leave their cities, and a large number of them have sought refuge in the cities of Erbil and Sulaymaniyah, located in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

Killing of Civil Society Activists and Demonstrators

On 15 September 2020, civil society activist Sheelan Dara Raouf (the main photo above) was killed along with her father, lawyer Dara Raouf, and her mother, retired government employee Alia Rashid Najem, in their apartment in the Mansour neighbourhood, in west Baghdad. The next day, the killer was arrested in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region, with joint cooperation between the security services in Baghdad and the Counter-Terrorism Service in the Kurdistan region.

The Counter-Terrorism Service in the Kurdistan Region broadcast, on the same day, a video containing the confessions of the killer of Raouf and her family. The video shows a person named Mahdi Hussein Nasser, 35 years old, who works as a policeman in the Ministry of the Interior and within the protection force of the Russian embassy located near the apartment in which the family lived. He confessed to killing the father and then the mother by stabbing them with a knife, then strangling their daughter. He then stole more than USD$10,000 and went to Erbil on his way to Turkey, where he was arrested at the hotel in which he was staying after failing to obtain a Turkish entry visa.

Raouf was born in the Sulaymaniyah Governorate in the Kurdistan region of Iraq in 1992, and graduated from the College of Pharmacy in Baghdad in 2016, when she started working as a pharmacist at the Cancerous Tumour Hospital in the Medical City of Baghdad. Her Facebook page features a picture of the Turkish restaurant building in Al-Tahrir Square in October 2019, when protesters demanding change were filling its fourteen floors. She participated in the popular movement, where she was working as a paramedic in Al-Tahrir Square in central Baghdad during the popular demonstrations that swept Iraq since the first of October 2019. She provided support to the injured protesters and supported the protests with their ultimate goal of achieving comprehensive reform. She possessed an intelligent mind and a beautiful and elegant personality, exceptional in morals, and generosity, and had a good heart, according to her colleagues and friends who loved her and considered her among the best pharmacists in Iraq. She and her parents were buried in her hometown, Sulaymaniyah, on 17 September 2020, amid widespread popular mourning all over the country.

GCHR previously issued an appeal in which it expressed its devastation over the killing of prominent human rights defender Dr. Riham Yaqoub, who was assassinated on the evening of 19 August 2020. This was preceded by the assassination of the well-known journalist and security expert, Dr. Hisham Al-Hashemi, and human rights defender Tahseen Osama Ali (Tahseen Al-Shahmani), and many human rights activists, including journalists, were subjected to assassinations or kidnappings after repeated threats were directed against them by armed groups, as detailed in GCHR’s seventh periodic report.

On 12 September 2020, a peaceful demonstrator, Yousif Rabia Al-Kalabi, aged 15 years, died of his wounds after having been in hospital for more than three months. He was injured while participating in the demonstrations in Al-Khilani Square in Baghdad. He had a funeral on the same evening in Al-Tahrir Square, in which his friends and a number of  protesters participated.

Assassination attempts against civil society activists

On 19 September 2020, at 8:30 p.m., civil society activist Sajjad Al-Iraqi (Al-Mushrifawi) (photo 1) was kidnapped by seven armed people in two white Toyota pickups, with unknown license plate numbers, in Al-Azirj area on the outskirts of Nasiriyah. He was accompanied by a number of his fellow civil society activists, including Muntadhar Abdulkarim, and Basem Fleih (photo 2), who recognised one of the kidnappers and called him by name, so they shot his leg with a silencer pistol. Fleih was injured as a result and transferred to the hospital for treatment. Al-Iraqi is one of the well-known participants of sit-ins in the Nasiriyah sit-in, which was filled the following day with protesters who condemned his kidnapping. Al-Iraqi uses social media to express his courageous and expressive views to reject corruption in state facilities and his support for the popular movement. The last tweet he posted on the day of his abduction was on his Twitter account about corruption in the Prime Minister’s Office. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history but did not get a job yet. He was in the October youth tent when it was targeted by an explosive device.

Civil society activists Dr. Adnan Al-Kamar, Dr. Mohammed Al-Mansoori, and Mohammed Jaber (photo 3) survived an assassination attempt that took place late at night on 20 August 2020 in Babil Governorate. Reliable local sources said that unknown gunmen pursued the three activists and tried to assassinate them with silencer weapons on the Hilla-Qasim road after returning to their homes in Al-Qasim district. They are among the prominent faces in the ongoing protests in the district of Al-Qasim, in the Governorate of Babil.

Attacks on sit-ins squares

On 13 September 2020, unknown persons set fire to three tents in the main sit-in square in the centre of Najaf (photo 1), where the flames escalated without causing any casualties, as the civil defence teams controlled and extinguished the fire. The next day, Najaf protesters cleaned the sit-in square (photo 2), confirming that their protests would continue.

On 21 August 2020, a device exploded that was inside a motorcycle parked behind the October Youth Tent in Al-Haboubi Square in the city of Nasiriyah (photos 3 & 4), wounding 11 people, including the young protesters who were in this tent. Some of them were previously threatened by armed militias. The explosion also led to the burning of two tents.

The use of explosive devices against civil society activists

On 18 September 2020, the security forces dismantled an explosive device placed in front of the house of human rights defender Aseel Abdulwahid Al-Yasiri, in the Baghdad Road area in the city of Kirkuk. Al-Yasiri has posted a video and photos of the attack on her Facebook page. She is the director of the group Adaa Al-Shabab for Human Rights, which is active in the Kirkuk Governorate in providing relief to poor families, organising various cultural seminars and spreading awareness among young people.

On 19 August 2020, an explosive device exploded at the home of civil society activist Mohsen Al-Zaidi, located in Sumer neighbourhood in the city of Nasiriyah, the central city of Dhi Qar Governorate, causing only material damage. Al-Zaidi participated strongly in the popular protests in the city of Nasiriyah, and uses his Facebook page to call for the killers of peaceful protesters to be held accountable, for an end to corruption and to support the popular movement.

Arrests of civil society activists and solidarity marches

On 13 September 2020, civil society activist Yassin Al-Abadi (photo 1) was arrested in Hilla after publishing a video in which he criticised the Minister of Interior. Al-Abadi is a photographer and one of the prominent faces in the sit-in square in Hilla, the central city of Babil Governorate, and he publishes his views against rampant corruption and the practices of armed militias strongly and continuously on his Facebook page. 

Solidarity between the different sit-in squares has been constantly embodied during the current popular movement. On 10 September 2020, SWAT forces in Babil Governorate arrested Dr. Dergham Majid (photo 2) and a number of other demonstrators who called for the removal of corrupt officials, including the Governor, and for the killers of the protesters to be held accountable. SWAT forces and emergency regiments pursued and suppressed the demonstrators in the streets and alleys in order to disperse them, but they refused to disperse and blocked the roads, demanding the release of those arrested. When civil society activist Dr. Mohammed Al-Mansoori (photo 3), who had previously been subjected to an assassination attempt on 20 August 2020, intended to demonstrate calling for the release of the detainees, he was arrested by the security forces.

In the western city of Al-Hamza in Babil Governorate, the entrance to the city was closed by young men in protest against the arrest of Dr. Majid and his colleagues, calling for the release of all of them. On the evening of the same day, protesters in Al-Haboubi Square also declared their solidarity with Dr. Majid and his colleagues (photo 4), denouncing the attack on the demonstrators and demanding the release of the detainees. In Al-Tahrir Square in Baghdad, demonstrators demanded the release of the Babil detainees during a solidarity march (photo 5). In the city of Karbala, in an appeal read in the main sit-in square (photo 6), protesters demanded freedom for Dr. Majid and all his colleagues.

These popular protests led to the release of Dr. Majid, Dr. Al-Mansoori and their colleagues hours after their arrest. Dr. Majid was arrested again, accompanied by a group of his fellow demonstrators, by SWAT forces and riot control forces on 11 September 2020, and were detained in Babil Governorate Intelligence Directorate before being released on bail on 12 September 2020.

Attack on a demonstration and civil society activists

On 09 September 2020, a group of riot police attacked a number of male and female graduates of the College of Administration and Economics, who were protesting in front of the Prime Minister’s office in the Alawi Al-Hillah district of Baghdad, demanding to be given positions in the ministries concerned with their specialisation. Some of them were insulted, while others tried to protect their colleagues from being beaten by riot police, who used batons and electric shocks to disperse the protesters. A number of them were injured as a result of the assault.

On 25 August 2020, the protection force of the Governor of Salah Al-Din attacked civil society activist Yazid Hassoun Affan and a group of civil activists with him, after preventing them from attending a meeting of the Minister of Youth and Sports in the Governorate council building in the city of Tikrit.

Affan said in a press statement that, “Omar Jaber Khalil, the brother of Governor Ammar Jaber Khalil, assaulted, beat, and waved weapons in my face, and assaulted other people who were with me, namely Nasser Al-Hajri, Imad Al-Shakati, Saad Al-Mahdi, and Nasr Al-Tikriti.”

Affan also mentioned that “The Governor offered the invitation only to some young people close to him to attend the meeting, while he and his colleagues were intending to provide information on the reality of youth and their suffering to the ministry and uncover corruption files, which is the cause of the attack.” A group of young people in the Governorate denounced this attack in a statement they read during a gathering, declaring full solidarity with Affan and the group that was attacked with him. Affan calls on his Facebook page to build a free Iraq without racial discrimination, and also calls for the elimination of corruption in his Governorate.

On 23 August 2020, civil society activist Haider Khadim Abbas (Abu Shehaima) was attacked with a knife in front of his house in the local administration neighborhood in the city of Nasiriyah. The attack was carried out by the advisor to the governor of Dhi Qar for sports affairs, Haitham Al-Dabi, who stabbed him more than 20 times in various parts of his body. The reason for the attack was Abu Shehaima’s post on his Facebook page – which he uses to fight corruption – in which he called for an investigation into the unlawful distribution of plots of land, the beneficiaries of which were the Governorate’s employees. On 06 September 2020, the police of Dhi Qar Governorate arrested Al-Dabi at the governor’s office after the security forces insisted on taking him in.

Investigations into Violations

The President of the Supreme Judicial Council, Judge Dr. Faiq Zaidan, received on 03 September 2020, the National Security Adviser, Qassem Al-Araji, the Head of the National Security Service, Abdul-Ghani Al-Asadi, and the Head of the Anti-Terrorism Service, Lieutenant General, Abdel-Wahab Al-Saadi. The Media Centre of the Supreme Judicial Council stated that “the meeting discussed the judicial procedures regarding the incidents of martyrdom and injury of demonstrators and members of the security forces.”

The President of the Council indicated to the attendees that “the investigative bodies concerned with these cases issued a number of arrest warrants against a number of employees of the Ministries of Defence and Interior, but under the Military Notices Law and the Internal Security Forces Notifications Law, the approval of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and the Minister of Interior must be obtained to implement these warrants.”

He also explained that, “The Judicial Investigation Authority in Al-Rusafa summoned both the defence and interior ministers of the previous government to seek clarification from them about information related to the investigation of these cases.” He added, “There are a number of arrested officers pending investigation in these cases and others who have been sentenced. The competent courts are currently subject to scrutiny by the Court of Cassation.” In addition, directives were issued to abolish the leadership of the “Law-Keeping” Forces, which committed grave violations against peaceful demonstrators, and to transfer them to his commanders at the level of a section of the Baghdad Police Directorate.

Victims of enforced disappearances in Iraq 

On 30 August 2020, the International Day of Victims of Enforced Disappearance, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a report calling for independent investigations to uncover the fate of about 1,000 civilian men and boys who were forcibly disappeared between 2015 and 2016 in Anbar province, in western Iraq.

In its report, UNAMI indicated that there were credible allegations of enforced disappearances from several other governorates, including Nineveh, Kirkuk, Salah al-Din, Diyala, Babylon, and the capital, Baghdad.

UNAMI called on the Iraqi government to recognise and compensate the victims, establish a strong national legal framework to protect against enforced disappearance, achieve compliance and procedural safeguards, and ensure that enforced disappearances in Anbar and other governorates are subject to comprehensive investigations that lead to accountability.

During the 19^th session of the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearance, being held online from 07 to 25 September 2020, Iraq was among the countries scheduled to be reviewed. After the infection with Covid-19 of some members of the Iraqi delegation and the quarantine required for the rest of the delegation as a result, the permanent mission of Iraq requested the Committee on Enforced Disappearances to postpone the dialogue scheduled for 14 and 15 September 2020. The committee is currently exploring various options for conducting the aforementioned dialogue as soon as possible.

Press statement by 18 diplomatic missions in Baghdad

On 21 August 2020, a press release was issued by 18 diplomatic missions in the capital, Baghdad, about assassinations in Iraq, stating, “The embassies of Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, accredited to Iraq, wish to express their deep concern about the recent escalation in cases of violence against Iraqi civil society activists. We condemn in particular the assassinations that targeted activists in the city of Basra and Baghdad under a systematic campaign of overt threats and intimidation.”

GCHR calls on the Iraqi government to work seriously and diligently in order to achieve the principle of accountability in relation to the crimes of murder, kidnapping and other violations committed against peaceful demonstrators, activists and journalists, and to bring the perpetrators in front of a fair judiciary.