ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Amnesty International on Thursday called on Iraqi authorities to reveal the fate of more than 600 Iraqi men “forcibly disappeared” by Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) five years ago.
“For five years, the families of these men and boys have been living in anguish, not knowing the fate of their loved ones, or whether they are even alive,” said Lynn Maalouf, deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.
On June 3, 2016 around 1,300 men and boys were put into buses and trucks by armed men as they were trying to flee from the Islamic State group (ISIS) in the city of Saqlawiyah in the Fallujah district of Anbar province. The men were considered to be of fighting age.
The whereabouts of at least 643 of them are still unknown.
Survivors told Amnesty International they recognized the armed men as members of the PMF because of their clothing and identifying patches.
ISIS seized control of vast areas of northern Iraq in 2014, killing civilians and enslaving others across Sunni-majority provinces. Fallujah was the first major urban center seized by the militant group. The Iraqi army and the PMF launched an offensive on May 22, 2016 to retake the city.
According to a 2016 report from Human Rights Watch, militias belonging to the PMF, also known as Hashd al-Shaabi or the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), entered the district alongside Iraqi federal police and detained at least 1,700 men.
A day later, 605 detainees were released for medical treatment – many of them bearing the marks of rape and torture. According to the watchdog, at least four men died under torture. Some of them had been dragged behind vehicles. Another later died in hospital.
The PMF had a database of wanted individuals. As families fled the fighting and crossed PMF lines, their names were checked with the database. If a name matched, the men of the household were arrested and taken to an undisclosed location.
Human Rights Watch has accused the PMF militias, many of which are Shiite, of committing war crimes by destroying Sunni homes and executing civilians accused of ISIS affiliations.
Hadi al-Amiri, a senior PMF commander and current head of the Iraqi parliament’s Fatih coalition, “vowed” at the time to hold to account those who had committed war crimes and abuses against civilians.
Two separate committees were formed by then Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi and the governorate of Anbar, but neither has revealed any details about the missing men and boys.
“To date, the Iraqi authorities have never publicly revealed the outcome of an investigation into disappearances and abuses committed during the retaking of Fallujah, leaving families in a perpetual state of limbo,” said Amnesty International’s Maalouf.
“The Iraqi authorities must end this anguish and reveal the fate and whereabouts of those forcibly disappeared by the PMU. We also urge the authorities to publicly disclose the findings of their official investigation and hold those responsible to account to the full extent of the law,” she added.
According to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Iraq has one of the highest numbers of missing people in the world, to a point that every Iraqi family has firsthand experience or knows someone who was forcibly disappeared.
