Human Rights Watch - "Protesters Beaten, Abducted"

The interrogator and two accomplices then repeatedly kicked Hashim and beat him on the back with plastic cables, he said, as they ordered him to tell them who was financing the demonstrations. The interrogator separately questioned Taha and Muhsin on the same topics while kicking and beating them.

After about an hour, the interrogator made all three sign a pledge not to demonstrate again and threatened to abduct, torture, and kill them if they spoke to the media. On September 19, Hashim obtained a medical report from Sheikh Zayed Emergency Hospital, documenting bruises on his back and face.

Hashim told Human Rights Watch that two days later he filed a complaint against three security officials, including Abadi as commander-in-chief, at the Saadoun police station and with the local prosecutor. He and Taha testified before Judge Anwar al-Bayati in Karada Court on October 11, who sent them back to the police station to bring witnesses. The prosecutor, who under Iraqi criminal procedure law should investigate and pursue criminal complaints, had not intervened in the matter, Taha told Human Rights Watch, and that he was not aware of any outcome of the prosecutor’s intervention.

On September 21, in Nasiriyya, the capital of the southern province of Dhi Qar, a journalist named Haqqi Karim Hadi told Human Rights Watch he was reporting in a public square for a television show about the impending Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha when two men in civilian clothes told him to stop filming. He asked them who they were and they answered, “Intelligence,” but refused to show their badges.