Iraq: 17-year-old Construction Worker Disappears in Baghdad Governorate

On 11 October 2015, construction worker Ayoub Al Mashhadani, aged 17 at the time, was arrested at his workplace and taken to an unknown location. Until today, his family was not able to obtain any information on his fate and whereabouts. Concerned over these facts, on 7 January 2016, Alkarama and Al Wissam Humanitarian Assembly sent Al Mashhadani's case to the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED), with the hope that this mechanism for the protection of human rights can help locate him.

Al Mashhadani was working at a construction site near his house in Al Tarmia, in the Al Faris district of the Baghdad Governorate, when uniformed members of Brigade 22 of the sixth division of the Iraqi Army stormed into the place and arrested him and his colleagues, forcing them into Hummer pickup trucks. While his colleagues were released after a few minutes, Al Mashhadani was taken to the Taji Camp – the headquarters of the sixth division in the al-Moshahada area, north of Baghdad – where he would still be detained, as his family was informally told by his colleagues.

After his disappearance, Al Mashhadani's friends enquired about his whereabouts several times at the headquarters of the sixth division of the Iraqi army, but the authorities denied the victim's detention. Left with no other recourse at the national level, his family turned to Alkarama and Al Wissam Humanitarian Assembly, hoping that the two human rights organisations could help shed light on Al Mashhadani's fate and whereabouts. The organisations, in turn, seized the CED, requesting it to call upon the Iraqi authorities to release Al Mashhadani immediately or, at the very, to put him under the protection of the law by disclosing his whereabouts and allowing his family to visit him without restriction.

Alkarama recalls that the issue of enforced disappearances in Iraq is especially complex due to the length of time over which the practice occurs, starting from the regime that ruled Iraq from 1968 to 2003 – especially during the war with Iran in the 1980s – and continuing throughout the US-led invasion after 2003, having become a widespread practice today. Concerned over the hundreds of thousands of people disappeared in Iraq to date, Alkarama calls upon the Iraqi authorities to urgently implement the recommendations that the CED issued during its 9th session, and in particular to:

• Incorporate the crime of enforced disappearance into domestic law as an autonomous offence, in line with the definition contained in Article 2 of the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearances (ICPPED) ratified by Iraq in 2010;
• Ensure that all persons who were forcibly disappeared and whose fate is not yet known are searched for and located without delay.

For more information or an interview, please contact the media team at media@alkarama.org (Dir: +41 22 734 1008)