International call to open mass graves for victims of crimes in Iraq

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[size=52]International call to open mass graves for victims of crimes in Iraq[/size]

[size=45]Human Rights Watch called on the Iraqi government to open graves for the genocides committed by Saddam Hussein’s regime during his rule of Iraq, in addition to other graves for the mass killings carried out by ISIS during its control of areas estimated at two-thirds of the country in mid-2014.[/size]
[size=45]The organization said that the bodies of hundreds of thousands of victims of unlawful killings remain buried in mass graves across Iraq. The graves contain the bodies of victims of successive conflicts, including Saddam Hussein’s genocide against the Kurds in 1988 and the mass killings committed by ISIS between 2014 and 2017.[/size]
[size=45]According to the report, the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh/ISIL (UNITAD), established by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in 2017 to document serious crimes committed by ISIS in Iraq, supported the Iraqi government’s Mass Graves Directorate and Medico-Legal Directorate in exhuming 67 ISIS-related mass graves during its tenure.[/size]
[size=45]But in late 2023, at the request of the Iraqi government, the Security Council chose to extend UNITAD’s mandate for only one additional year, meaning it would cease operations in September 2024.[/size]
[size=45]Meanwhile, Sarah Sanbar, Amnesty International’s Iraq researcher, said: “The mass graves are a painful reminder of the most violent chapters in Iraq’s history, and exhuming them is crucial to allowing the victims’ families, and the country as a whole, any hope of justice and healing from these wounds. People have a right to know the fate of their loved ones and to give them a proper and dignified burial.”[/size]
[size=45]The Strategic Center for Human Rights in Iraq estimates that the country’s mass graves contain the remains of 400,000 people. Iraq has one of the highest numbers of missing persons in the world, estimated at between 250,000 and 1 million people, many of whom are believed to be buried in mass graves.[/size]
[size=45]To promote justice and accountability for victims and their families, the Iraqi government should step up efforts to exhume bodies, identify victims, return remains to families for proper burial, issue death certificates, and compensate families, as required by Iraqi law, Human Rights Watch said.[/size]
[size=45]The report quoted Diaa Karim Taama, Director General of the Iraqi Federal Government’s Department of Mass Graves Affairs and Protection, as saying that “officials have exhumed 288 mass graves since 2003,” adding that “as long as we do not have a unified national registry, we have no way of knowing the number of people buried in mass graves.”[/size]
[size=45]Between 2017 and 2023, UNITAD assisted Iraqi authorities in exhuming 1,237 bodies of victims of the Camp Speicher massacre, where ISIS killed 1,700 soldiers, cadets and volunteers who fled the Tikrit Air Academy between 12 and 14 June 2014, from 14 graves and two riverside crime scenes.[/size]
[size=45]UNITAD’s June 2024 report finds reasonable grounds to believe that the massacre was committed with genocidal intent, amounting to crimes against humanity and war crimes.[/size]
[size=45]Most recently, on 28 May 2024, Iraqi authorities and UNITAD announced that they had begun excavating the “Alo Antar” crater, a mass grave in the Tal Afar district. The cemetery, located about 60 kilometres west of Mosul, is believed to contain the bodies of more than a thousand people. Between 2014 and 2017, ISIS used the crater to carry out mass executions and dump bodies in it.[/size]
[size=45]But with the September 17 deadline to end UNITAD's operations in Iraq approaching, there are concerns that Iraqi authorities will not fill the gap left by UNITAD, the report said.[/size]
[size=45]The Supreme Judicial Council announced on Sunday, August 11, that it had received an archive from the international investigation team “UNITAD” regarding the crimes committed by ISIS in Iraq.[/size]
[size=45]The investigation team was established by Security Council Resolution 2379 of 2017, and its aim was to “strengthen accountability efforts for crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL),” according to the UNITAD website.[/size]
[size=45]On Wednesday, March 20, Reuters published a lengthy report in which it said that the UN team was forced to end its work early before completing the investigations after its relationship with the Iraqi government became tense.[/size]
[size=45]In turn, the Director General of the Department of Mass Graves Affairs and Protection confirmed: “Certainly, there will be a vacuum when they leave (UNITAD), but the Iraqi government has issued its decision that the team’s mandate has ended, so we must have an alternative plan.”[/size]
[size=45]Human Rights Watch noted that the huge burden of backlogged cases combined with the limited capacity of the Iraqi government means that the process is extremely slow for victims’ families.[/size]
[size=45]Taama said that Iraq has only one laboratory licensed to conduct DNA identification of remains extracted from mass graves, which is the “DNA Analysis Laboratory” affiliated with the Forensic Medicine Department in Baghdad.[/size]
[size=45]In preparation for departure, UNITAD supported the Forensic DNA Laboratory to obtain ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Accreditation means that the laboratory’s results in Baghdad will be internationally recognized, allowing its results to be accepted as evidence in courts worldwide.[/size]
[size=45]For his part, Khabat Abdullah, advisor to the Ministry of Martyrs and Anfal Affairs in the Kurdistan Regional Government, said that the Criminal Forensic Department of the Kurdistan Regional Ministry of Interior operates a laboratory that has the capacity to identify the DNA of five to seven bodies per day. But under the Mass Graves Affairs Law No. 5 of 2006, only the laboratory in Baghdad is authorized to analyze DNA samples taken from mass graves.[/size]
[size=45]For the families of victims buried in mass graves, the pace of exhumations and bureaucratic obstacles prevent them from closing the matter, making matters worse, the organization said in its report.[/size]
[size=45]The organization pointed out that “exhuming bodies from mass graves is crucial to ensuring the right to know the truth about gross human rights violations, and to ensuring that Iraq is able to fulfill its duty to ensure effective remedies and reparations, and to conduct effective investigations. Evidence collected from mass graves can and should also be used in criminal proceedings to ensure that perpetrators of crimes are held accountable.”[/size]
[size=45]The report continued, "The authorities should increase efforts to exhume bodies from mass graves in Iraq through an impartial approach, regardless of the identity of the victims or alleged perpetrators."[/size]
[size=45]In its report, the organization called on the Iraqi government to increase funding for the Department of Mass Graves Affairs and Protection and the Department of Forensic Medicine, and to improve their ability to collect evidence, including through digital scanning and reconstruction of crime scenes, biological material storage facilities, and victim identification processes.[/size]
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