Iraq: 4 Iraqi Citizens Disappear after Arrest by Government Forces in Baghdad Neighbourhood

On 23 September 2015, Alkarama and Al Wissam Humanitarian Assembly sent a communication to the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) regarding the case of four men who disappeared following their arrests in the surroundings of Baghdad between May and November 2014.

Circumstances of the 4 men's respective disappearances

On 21 May 2014, 10 masked armed men dressed in military uniforms and likely to belong to Iraq's Special Weapons and Tactics Unit (SWAT forces) stormed into 60-year-old Adnan Al Zoubai's house in Yusufiyah, about 35km southeast of Baghdad, and arrested him before dragging him into a Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck and driving him to an unknown location.

Two months later, on 20 July 2014, construction workers and brothers, 26-year-old Hussein and 29-year-old Mekdad Al Dulaimi, were at their sister's house in the village of Ja'ara, about 40 km southwest of Baghdad, when a group of 10 armed men from the military intelligence dressed in civilian clothes stormed into the house, threatening the family by holding them at gunpoint. They arrested the brothers and dragged them into one of their vehicles, before driving them to an unknown location.

Lastly, on 13 November 2014, at 8am, bus driver Abdullah Al Janabi was driving passengers in his minibus from Hor Rajab to Yusufiyah, when he was stopped at a military checkpoint in Al Edwania where he and his passengers were forced out of the vehicle. Al Janabi was arrested immediately and dragged into a Hammer pickup truck by members of the Federal police and the Army, which allegedly drove Al Janabi to Regiment No. 23 and took his minibus to Regiment No. 17.

Steps taken to locate them

Following the respective disappearances of the four men, their families inquired about their whereabouts in several detention centres and police stations, as well as with governmental bodies, including the Ministry of Human Rights and the Ministry of Health, but none of these authorities was able to provide the families with information on the fate and whereabouts of their relatives. Left with no other recourse, the families contacted Al Wissam Humanitarian Assembly – an Iraqi human rights organisation documenting cases of disappearances – as well as Alkarama, in the hope that they could help locate and release the four victims.

In view of the facts, the two human rights NGOs seized the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED), requesting it to ask the Iraqi authorities to release the victims immediately or, at the very least, to put them under the protection of the law by disclosing their whereabouts and allowing their families to visit them without restriction.

Alkarama also calls upon the Iraqi authorities to urgently implement the recommendations the Committee issued during its 9th session, and in particular to:

• Adopt all the necessary measures to ensure that no person is held in secret detention, including by guaranteeing that all persons deprived of liberty are afforded, since the outset of their deprivation of liberty, all the fundamental legal safeguards provided under Article 17 of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICCPED)
• 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).