Human Rights Watch - "Protesters Beaten, Abducted"

Husain Karim Abd al-Kazhim, a young lawyer who was also there, said that a large number of security forces stormed the square without warning and blocked two roads, encircling the fleeing protesters. The security forces beat the protesters with truncheons and shocked them with electric tasers, said al-Kazhim, who received an electric shock himself.

The following day, 60 injured demonstrators filed a complaint with the public prosecutor against the governor and the heads of the security force branches, which included the anti-riot forces, the local police, and the national security forces, al-Kazhim said. Judge Abbas al-Dulaimi of the Hilla Investigative Court issued an arrest warrant for the provincial governor, Sadiq Madlul al-Sultani, but then released al-Sultani on a bail of several thousand United States dollars, al-Kazhim said. Those who filed the complaint understand that the prosecutor has taken no further action to investigate further or file any charges against those named in the complaint.

Instead, the prosecutor then opened a criminal investigation against the protesters for resisting arrest and destroying public property and vehicles valued at over $1 million, al-Kazhim said. According to al-Kazhim and al-Khaiqani, the protesters did not damage property and only defended themselves once attacked. Al-Kazhim said that a judicial source informed him that the protesters’ lawsuit against the governor and security heads had not resulted in any criminal investigation due to “political pressure.”

“Upholding the law and pursuing those who break it are the essential duties of a prosecutor,” Stork said. “Yet Iraq’s prosecutors have not responded to repeated complaints about security forces, or those acting as such, violently dispersing protests or abducting protesters without any apparent justification.”

(Source: HRW)