Iraqi police deny Amnesty report of extrajudicial killings south of Mosul

 

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region—Iraqi federal police has rejected a report by Amnesty International of unlawful killing and torturing of civilians south of Mosul by members of the police force, saying their forces have come to the aid of civilians with aid and saved them from being used by ISIS as human shields.

 

“The Iraqi federal police rejects a report by Amnesty International on our forces having committed crimes against a number of civilians in the region of Shura or elsewhere,” the media office of the Iraqi federal police said in a Facebook post on Thursday.

 

The Amnesty report said that “Researchers from the organization visited several villages in the al-Shura and al-Qayyara sub-districts of Ninewa governorate, south-west and south of Mosul, and gathered evidence indicating that up to six people were extrajudicially executed in late October, apparently due to suspicions they had ties to the armed group calling itself the Islamic State (IS).”

 

The organization said: “The Iraqi authorities must urgently investigate reports that fighters wearing Iraqi Federal Police uniforms tortured and extrajudicially executed residents in villages they captured south of Mosul, said Amnesty International.”

 

“Deliberately killing captives and other defenceless individuals is prohibited by international humanitarian law and is a war crime.” Amnesty said in its report.

 

The Iraqi police however, said that the allegations were not true and that “The federal police command stresses its full commitment to the instructions of the commander in chief and the joint command on values and principles of humanity in protecting civilians and their properties and affording them all assistance during the operations of liberation south of Mosul.”

 

“The command of the federal police has offered various humanitarian aid, exceeding 150 tons of flour and food items in addition to assigning special medical teams to help and rescue more than 10,000 families who had been taken as human shield by the terrorists.” said the police response to the Amnesty report.