Abductions and Disappearances by Militias
In the weeks after the siege of Amerli was lifted, and with the subsequent ground offensive by militias and Iraqi and Peshmerga security forces, residents of the area told Human Rights Watch that militias apprehended and forcibly detained at least 11 men who had returned to their villages. In six cases the militias have since released six men; the whereabouts and well-being of the other five, and the reason for their detention, remain unknown.
Three people told Human Rights Watch that militiamen had tortured captured residents. J.M., a resident of Hufriyya Kabira, told Human Rights Watch that members of Kita’ib Hezbollah and the Badr Brigades took his 18-year-old son and a 20-year-old friend when they returned to the village to collect their pigeons on September 25. The militias later detained a relative of J.M. in the same location. The relative informed J.M. that militiamen took him to an unfinished house in Habash village, where he said he heard the boys being abused in an adjacent room. According to J.M.:
They kept the boys in an empty room. After a short while I heard screaming and the sounds of the two boys being tortured in the room next to me. I heard them interrogating them, asking them what they were doing in Hufriyya.
J.M. said that his relative was able to escape through family connections to a powerful Shia businessman, who arranged his release. “When he came out, he called me and told me they were detained in Habash,” J.M. told Human Rights Watch.
The other boy was able to call his parents and said he was being transferred to Baghdad but the line was cut. …. As for my son, one of his friends called me and told me he saw two Hashd al-Shaabi members driving [my son’s] motorcycle. He said he recognized [it] by a sticker of a flower on the front of it that matched the one on my son’s. I believe my son is dead.[35]
J.M. told Human Rights Watch that this was not the first incident of militia and security forces taking men and boys prisoner in the area. He said that he was initially displaced to Tuz Khurmatu in February 2014, when militias along with SWAT and federal police forces arrived in Hufriyya Kabira. On August 20, 2014, 10 days prior to aerial strikes on Amerli, militias took J.M.’s 16-year-old son and 18-year-old nephew from Tuz Khurmato to a location outside of the town, where they held them for 5 days. He said the boys told him they were “burned with cigarettes and tied to a ceiling fan,” and showed Human Rights Watch photos consistent with the alleged abuse. Members of their tribe eventually negotiated their release, he said.[36]
Throughout the belt of villages surrounding Amerli, where militias have taken over and claimed to be the official security forces, several residents similarly reported that militias detained residents. Tuz Khurmato residents told Human Rights Watch that members of Saraya Tala’a al-Khorasani detained villagers who returned to salvage what was left of their personal belongings. A Yengija resident told Human Rights Watch that on approximately October 13, militias took seven people captive, released four of them nine days later, and continued to hold three people at the time of the interview.[37] One of those detained, a 21-year-old Yengija resident, described to Human Rights Watch how Khorasani members held him and a group of six men:
[When we returned to Yengija], militiamen checked our IDs and papers and allowed us in. We went and got our things and loaded them into our car. On the way out, [Khorasani] stopped us at the same checkpoint. They told us that we couldn’t leave and had to wait for the commander to come. When he came, he told me to get out of my car. [Several militiamen] took me to a house 30 meters away on the main road and blindfolded and handcuffed my hands behind my back. The man who escorted me was wearing a camouflage uniform with a badge…. For the first half hour I was alone, then about 30 minutes later they brought in another six men. They kept saying, “You are ISIS,” and I kept denying it. They were beating me randomly on my face, head, shoulders using water pipes and the butts of their weapons….They went to have lunch and then came back and beat us for an hour and half. Later that night they asked me if I was Shia or Sunni. I told them I was Shia Turkoman and they ordered me to prove it by praying the Shia way….They kept me for nine days….On the third day they took away three men: Mohamed Khalil, 45, Ayman Khazal, 20, and Hussein Khalil, 46. …Even though I am Shia, since I lived with Sunnis for so long in Yengija they thought I may be associated with ISIS.[38]