Murder of civilians, taking hostages, and the torture or killing of detainees, including captured combatants, as well as pillaging, constitute war crimes.
ISIS has also targeted Iraqi police and security forces, many of them Shia, ordering them to “repent” at designated mosques in Mosul and the nearby city of Tal Afar for following state law rather than Sharia (Islamic law), or face death. Under that threat, hundreds of security officials and soldiers have “repented,” local residents told Human Rights Watch. But a relative of one Mosul policeman told Human Rights Watch that he fled instead after learning that two of his fellow police officers, both Shia, were found dead in late June in Mosul even though they had “repented” a few days earlier.
In late June and early July, ISIS seized 15 to 20 Sunni military officers or leading members of the banned Baath Party of former President Saddam Hussein, two regional government officials and three local activists told Human Rights Watch. ISIS released some of them but it has also taken in dozens of other former military officials and Baathists for hours of questioning, the two regional officials said.
The detained Sunnis included Gen. Waad Hannoush, once a top commander under Saddam Hussein, and Saifeddin al-Mashhadani, a Baathist whom the US included on its list of “most-wanted” Iraqis following its 2003 invasion of Iraq, the two officials and Reuters news agency reported.
Baathists, who are largely secular, and former military officials under Saddam Hussein supported the ISIS takeover of Mosul at first and may have helped curb the group’s abuses in the area, several opposition regional government officials told Human Rights Watch. Indeed, ISIS initially told Yazidis and Christians that they were “welcome” in Mosul and had “nothing to fear” from ISIS, members of the two communities told Human Rights Watch. The group’s abuses against minorities – though on a lesser scale than the violations the group has committed in neighboring Syria – and its roundups of ranking Baathists since then suggest fractures in the local Baathist-ISIS alliance.
ISIS should immediately cease its campaign of kidnapping, killing, and seizing or destroying the property of religious minorities, Human Rights Watch said. Regional Sunni authorities and members of other Sunni armed groups allied to ISIS should also press the group to stop its targeting of religious minorities and desecration.
“ISIS seems intent on wiping out all traces of minority groups from areas it now controls in Iraq,” Whitson said. “No matter how hard its leaders and fighters try to justify these heinous acts as religious devotion, they amount to nothing less than a reign of terror.”
(Source: Human Rights Watch)
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