Amnesty International Report 1995 - Iraq

Thousands of suspected government opponents and their relatives were detained during the year and tens of thousands arrested in previous years continued to be held. Among them were prisoners of conscience. Torture remained widespread and new punishments were introduced by law involving the mutilation of criminal offenders. The fate of many detainees arrested during the year remained unknown and the cases of thousands of detainees who "disappeared" in previous years remained unresolved. The scope of the death penalty was widened significantly and unknown numbers of judicial and extrajudicial executions were carried out. Widespread human rights abuses were committed in areas of Iraqi Kurdistan under Kurdish control, including arbitrary arrests, torture and deliberate and arbitrary killings. Economic sanctions against Iraq imposed by a UN Security Council cease-fire resolution in April 1991 remained in force. Two "air exclusion zones" over northern and southern Iraq continued to be imposed. The distribution of humanitarian relief under the terms of a previous UN-sponsored Memorandum of Understanding continued on a reduced scale. In November Iraq announced its intention to recognize its border with Kuwait under the terms of UN Security Council Resolution No. 833. The Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), Iraq's highest executive body, introduced cruel, inhuman and degrading punishments for at least 12 criminal offences in decrees issued from April onwards. These punishments, carried out by medical personnel in public hospitals, involve the amputation of the right hand for a first offence, and of the left foot for a second offence, or the severance of one or both ears. People convicted under these laws are also branded on the forehead with an identifying symbol. Offences punishable in this way include, under certain circumstances: theft, monopolizing rationed goods, defaulting or deserting from military service, and performing plastic surgery on an amputated arm or leg, or removing the mark branded on the forehead. The RCC also widened the scope of the death penalty to cover at least 18 new offences. These included embezzlement, forgery or bribery by military personnel; possessing and trading in medicines or medical equipment obtained from non-official sources; and deserting or defaulting from military service on three occasions. People accused of the last two offences are tried before special courts set up at the ministries of the Interior and Defence respectively. In June the RCC gave certain Arab Socialist Ba‘th Party members and other civilian officials the power to detain people without trial for up to five years, outside the official penal system, for offences involving rationed goods and foreign currency. Kurdish opposition forces retained control of parts of the northern provinces of Duhok, Arbil, Sulaimaniya and Kirkuk. These areas continued to be administered by the Council of Ministers for the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. The economic blockade imposed on the region by the Iraqi Government in October 1991 remained in force. In May widespread clashes broke out between forces of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Islamic Movement in Iraqi Kurdistan (IMIK), which continued intermittently until August. Serious human rights abuses were perpetrated by all sides during and after these clashes (see below). In November an agreement was signed between the main political parties to end their differences and proposing a series of political reforms. However, clashes between KDP and PUK forces broke out again in December. Widespread arrests of thousands of suspected government opponents were reported during the year but it was generally not possible to obtain further information on the detainees' fate or whereabouts. Most arrests were carried out by security and intelligence forces in Baghdad; there were also arrests in Mosul, Kirkuk, al-‘Amara, al-Najaf and other places. In the south, hundreds of civilians were reportedly arrested following armed attacks in June on villages in Misan Province and in the region of al-Majar al-Kabir in al-‘Amara Province. In July and August, widespread arrests were carried out in the Imam Qassem, Rahim Awa and Shorjah districts of Kirkuk by the security forces, reportedly on the pretext of searching for army deserters. Military personnel suspected of involvement in anti-government activity were also arrested during the year, among them First Lieutenant Tayyar Ra‘ad Isma‘il al-Jibburi who was arrested in August. Several members of the medical profession were also said to have been arrested after refusing to perform operations involving the amputation of limbs, ears or branding. Among them were ‘Abbas Qalandar and Nahrain Yusuf, both employed at the Baghdad Health Directorate. At least three foreign nationals, two Bangladeshis and one Indian, were believed to be still held in Abu Ghraib Prison near Baghdad after being accused of illegal entry into Iraq. Eight Pakistani nationals and four Romanian nationals imprisoned in 1992 and 1993 for the same offence were released in February and April respectively. Reports of the torture of detainees and sentenced prisoners continued to be received. Among those who died in custody were seven Ba‘thist government opponents arrested in 1993 and under sentence of death. It was unclear whether they had died under torture or whether they were tortured and then executed. They included Muhammad ‘Abd al-Ta'i from Diyala, Muhammad Ayyub al-Dulaimi from Mosul and Walid Shaker al-‘Ubaidi from Baghdad. Their bodies were returned to their families in August and September, reportedly disfigured by torture. The eyes of six of the victims had allegedly been gouged out. Other detainees were said to have died under torture shortly after arrest; among them was Karim al-Jihari who was arrested in April in Misan Province during a wave of arbitrary arrests in the south. There were also numerous reports of the security forces beating relatives of army deserters to find out their whereabouts. The new judicial punishments of amputation of the hand or foot, severance of the ear and branding were imposed widely, with hundreds of cases reported in Baghdad, Mosul, Basra and elsewhere. The majority of victims were people convicted of theft and army deserters. The first sentences of amputation of the hand were imposed by the Diyala criminal court in June on two people convicted of stealing carpets from a mosque. In some cases victims were later shown on television; one such case was that of ‘Ali ‘Ubaid ‘Abed ‘Ali, whose right hand was amputated and forehead branded in September following his conviction for theft. Some army deserters had their ears severed in military hospitals, allegedly without the use of anaesthetic or in other appalling conditions. Hassan ‘Ali Kadhim and Khaz‘al ‘Abed Mansur, whose ears were severed in al-Nasiriyya in September, reportedly died subsequently from infection. Others were reported to have died through haemorrhaging. New information was received about some of the many detainees who had "disappeared" in previous years. Details emerged of 25 Feyli Kurds (Shi‘a Muslims) who were arrested in 1980 and 1981, including ‘Ala'uddin Molaei al-Haydari and his nephew Deler who had been arrested in Baghdad in June 1981. Thirty other relatives arrested with them were held for four months and then forcibly expelled to Iran. During the 1970s and 1980s several hundred thousand Shi‘a Muslims, both Arabs and Kurds, were forcibly deported to Iran. Thousands of male members of such families were detained in Iraq, however, and many "disappeared". The cases of over 100,000 Kurds who "disappeared" during the 1988 and 1989 "Anfal Operations" remained unresolved (see previous Amnesty International Reports), as did the cases of an estimated 625 Kuwaiti and other nationals arrested by Iraqi forces during the occupation of Kuwait in 1990 and 1991, who were believed to be held in Iraq. The Iraqi Government reportedly said in September that 43 of the group of 625 were no longer alive but this could not be independently confirmed. Numerous executions were reported during the year but it was not possible to determine the total number or whether they were judicial or extrajudicial executions. Death sentences continued to be imposed for a wide range of criminal offences, including murder, rape and drug- trafficking, as well as political offences. In February the Court of Cassation upheld the death sentences passed on five people convicted of drug-trafficking in December 1993, but it was not known whether the sentences were carried out. Eight people convicted of murder and theft were executed in March; several of them were members of the Iraqi Communist Party who had reportedly been arrested on account of their political affiliation. Five others were also executed in March in Abu Ghraib Prison following conviction for currency speculation; among them was ‘Abbas al-‘Aoun, a money-changer from Baghdad. Several military and intelligence officers were reportedly executed in October and November after being accused of involvement in alleged coup attempts. An unknown number of unarmed civilians were extrajudicially executed in the southern marshes region, where military and special forces continued to launch deliberate and indiscriminate military attacks on civilian targets, including the settlements of al-Jibayesh, al-‘Uwaili and al-Saigal. Armed government opponents were reportedly shot dead after capture; among them were Faleh al-Bazzuni and ‘Adnan Khashan, who were arrested following an attack in the region of Umm al-Juwaish near al-Mdaina in March. Scores of families were displaced after their homes were destroyed or after fleeing to escape artillery shelling. Although over 4,000 refugees crossed the border into Iran during the year, the journey became increasingly hazardous as the widespread drainage of the marshes enabled Iraqi Government forces to cut off most escape routes. Extrajudicial executions of suspected government opponents also continued to be reported. In April a prominent government opponent, Shaikh Talib al-Suhail al-Tamimi, was shot dead in Beirut. The Lebanese authorities arrested two Iraqi diplomats said to have been implicated in the killing; they apparently later confessed to working for Iraqi intelligence. Also in April a German journalist, Lissy Schmidt, and her Kurdish bodyguard, ‘Aziz Qader, were shot dead near Sulaimaniya in Kurdish-held territory. Two people arrested by the Kurdish authorities reportedly confessed to working for Iraqi intelligence. In July Muhammad Taqi al-Kho'i, son of the late Grand Ayatollah Abul-Qasim al-Kho'i, died after a car accident on the al-Najaf-Karbala' road. There were fears that he might have been killed by Iraqi intelligence, who had caused the deaths of numerous government opponents in apparent "accidents" in the past. Muhammad Taqi al-Kho'i had been threatened and harassed since his release from prison in 1991, in particular for seeking to raise the cases of 106 Shi‘a Muslim clerics, scholars and students who "disappeared" in custody following their arrest in 1991 (see Amnesty International Report 1992). Several cases were also reported in which government opponents were poisoned with thallium. Among the victims was Safa' al-Battat, a merchant who was allegedly poisoned by government agents in Shaqlawa in December. Kurdish opposition groups were responsible for a wide range of human rights abuses during the May clashes and their aftermath. Several hundred fighters and party cadres were taken prisoner by the KDP, PUK and IMIK; although most were later released in prisoner exchanges, at least 59 were believed to have been killed after surrender or capture in Qala Diza, Rania, Koisanjaq, ‘Aqra, Salahuddin, Khormal, Halabja and other places. The bodies of some of them were reported to have been subsequently mutilated. Scores of unarmed civilians were arbitrarily detained on the basis of their political affiliation, held in unacknowledged places of detention and tortured, including with beatings and electric shocks. Civilian demonstrators were also killed. In one incident in June, over 20 people taking part in a funeral procession in Sulaimaniya were killed by PUK forces who reportedly fired at random into the crowd. Information was also obtained about torture and killings of prisoners by PUK and IMIK forces during clashes in December 1993 (see Amnesty International Report 1994). At least nine people were sentenced to death by the Sulaimaniya and Arbil criminal courts, all but one after being convicted of premeditated murder. Two of the sentences were upheld by the Court of Cassation, three others were reduced to life imprisonment and the rest were pending review at the end of the year. No death sentences were ratified and no executions carried out. At least 16 other prisoners sentenced to death in 1992 and 1993 for premeditated murder remained held. In February and July Amnesty International delegations visited Iraqi Kurdistan to investigate reports of human rights abuses committed in December 1993 and in May. The organization interviewed scores of detainees and former detainees, torture victims and eye-witnesses to deliberate and arbitrary killings. It raised its concerns with leaders of the PUK, KDP and IMIK, urging that thorough and impartial investigations be conducted into the abuses. In June Amnesty International publicly urged the Kurdish leadership to put an end to deliberate and arbitrary killings and the abduction, killing or torture of civilians based on their political ties. By the end of the year no investigations had been set up and none of the perpetrators had been brought to justice. Amnesty International continued to appeal to the Iraqi Government to halt human rights violations, including the detention of prisoners of conscience, arbitrary arrests of political suspects, unfair trials and "disappearances". It expressed concern at the introduction of the punishments of amputation and branding, and urged that these penalties be abolished. The organization also appealed for the commutation of all death sentences. No substantive responses were received. In an oral statement to the UN Commission on Human Rights in March, Amnesty International drew attention to its grave concerns in Iraq and urged that the UN Secretary-General make available without further delay the necessary resources to establish a human rights monitoring operation for Iraq. The Commission adopted a resolution condemning the "massive violations of human rights" perpetrated by the government, extended the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on Iraq for a further year and requested the UN Secretary-General to provide "appropriate additional resources" for human rights monitors for Iraq. A resolution adopted by the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities in August also called on the UN Secretary-General to provide "all necessary assistance to the Special Rapporteur to undertake his mission". In December the UN General Assembly passed a resolution requesting the UN Secretary-General to "approve the allocation of sufficient human and material resources" for setting up a human rights monitoring operation for Iraq. By the end of the year the human rights monitoring operation had not been set up.