On June 3, 2016 thousands of men and boys in the city of Saqlawiyah in Anbar’s Fallujah district were put into buses and trucks by armed men believed to be members of the PMF as part of military operations and under the pretext of suspected affiliation to the Islamic State (ISIS). The whereabouts of at least 643 of them are still unknown.
The human rights watchdog criticized the Iraqi governments’ failure to provide clarity on the whereabouts of these men and boys over seven years from their disappearance, saying that their families are entitled to redress and reparations.
“There is no bigger of a disaster than losing someone dear to you. We lost our loved ones, husbands, uncles, fathers. Everyone left. I don’t remember anything other than sadness,” Amnesty cited a woman abducted by the PMF forces alongside six of her family members on June 3, 2016.
The rights monitor called on the authorities to reveal the findings of the committee formed by former Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi back in 2016 to investigate these disappearances, and ensure that the information is shared with judicial authorities so that the suspects can be subjected to fair trials “without recourse to the death penalty.”
It also urged Iraq to criminalize enforced disappearances, which is still not identified as a crime under Iraqi law.
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 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.
The PMF was formed when a group of militias responded to a call-to-arms from revered Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to stand against ISIS in 2014. While the force has been officially incorporated into the Iraqi security apparatus, militias within their ranks operate outside of Baghdad’s control and receive support from Iran.
