Cairo, Aug 13 (EFE).- Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Tuesday warned that hundreds of thousands of victims of unlawful killings remain in Iraq’s mass graves without identification or justice as the end of the mandate of the United Nations body tasked with documenting serious crimes in the country looms.
The mass graves are from successive conflicts, «including Saddam Hussein’s genocide against the Kurds in 1988 and mass killings by the Islamic State … between 2014-17,” HRW said in a statement.
The UN Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh/IS (Unitad) has supported the Iraqi government’s Mass Graves Directorate and the Medico-Legal Directorate in the excavation of 67 mass graves related to IS.
Between 2017 and 2023, Unitad helped Iraqi authorities exhume 1,237 victims of the Camp Speicher massacre, where IS killed 1,700 soldiers, cadets and volunteers escaping from the Tikrit Air Academy over June 12-14, 2014, from 14 graves and two riverine crime scenes, HRW said.
“Unitad’s June 2024 report finds reasonable grounds to believe the massacre was undertaken with genocidal intent, amounting to crimes against humanity and war crimes,” HRW said.
On 28 May this year, Iraqi authorities and the UN body announced that they had begun excavating the Alo Antar pit in Tel Afar district of northwest Iraq, which IS used for mass executions and dumping bodies between 2014-2017.
The mass grave, about 60 kilometres west of Mosul – the former de facto capital of IS in Iraq – is believed to contain the bodies of more than 1,000 people.
«As the September 17 deadline to terminate Unitad’s operations in Iraq approaches, there is concern that the gap they leave may not be adequately filled by Iraqi authorities,» HRW said.
Authorities have opened 288 mass graves since 2003, Dhiaa Kareem Taama, director general of the Iraqi federal government’s Department of Mass Graves Affairs and Protection, told HRW, noting that «as long as there is no unified national registry, there is no way for us to know how many people may be buried in mass graves.»
“Mass graves are painful reminders of the most violent chapters of Iraqi history and exhuming them is crucial for allowing families of victims – and the nation – to get any hope of justice and heal from these wounds,” said HRW Iraq researcher Sarah Sanbar. “People have a right to know the fate of their loved ones and give them a proper and dignified burial.”
The Strategic Center for Human Rights in Iraq estimates that mass graves in the country 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, many of whom are believed to be buried in mass graves.
HRW called on the Iraqi government to «intensify efforts to exhume graves, identify victims, return remains to families for proper burials, issue death certificates, and compensate families, as required under Iraqi law.»
Unitad was created by the UN Security Council resolution in 2017 to document serious crimes committed by IS in Iraq. EFE
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