By Kathryn Maureen Ryan
Impunity Watch, Managing Editor

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Jana, a 19 year old girl, was finishing her final year of secondary school with hopes of one day becoming a doctor when her village was taking over by fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). Jana belongs to Iraq’s Yazidis religious minority. The Yazidis are a Kurdish community who practice Yazidism, an ancient faith with strong ties to Zoroastrianism and ancient Mesopotamian religions that has been heavily influenced by both Islam and Christianity. Yazidism is practiced by Kurdish communities that are practiced in both Iraq and Syria.

 

According to a United Nation’s report ISIS fighters “gathered all the males older than 10 years of age at the local school, took them outside the village by pick-up trucks, and shot them.”Among those believed to have been murdered by ISIS fighters were Jana’s father and eldest brother.

“I was hiding behind a water tank in the front yard and saw them killing my father and brother and [taking] away my mother and sister. I don’t know anything about them since” a 14-year-old Yazidi girl living in a refugee camp in Iraq’s Duhok governorate. A19 year old Yazidi said “They put us in trucks and drove us to a big building, before transferring us to a hall across the road. She continued, “Then their seniors came and started condemning our religion and asking us to convert to Islam … They separated me along with other young ones and ordered us to stay there while taking away the elderly women. She added, “The man I was given to raped me several times and then left me in the room on my own. I was shaking from pain and fear in that hot room, my entire body sweating. Suddenly, another man came and did what he wanted to do despite me crying and begging him, kissing his foot to leave me alone …”

Thousands of Yazidi women and girls have abducted by ISIS fighters, many were taken during their attack on the Sinjar district on 2 August 2014. 2,500 girls and women were abducted during the attack on Sinjar. Since then, one hundred girls and women have managed to escape their jailers and rejoin their community.

The enslaved women have become a source of income for the ISIS group. Treated like cattle, they are trafficked in markets in Mosul in Iraq, and Raqqa in Syria. The women and girls are often sold for between $25 and $1,000. Women who resisted are killed and many have committed suicide, some Yazidi who managed to get their stories out of ISIS controlled territories have said they would rather face death than life as a sex slave.

Enslavement of women has been used as a weapon of war by ISIS, it is used as a means of subjecting the community, dissolve family units and even pollute the bloodlines of the populations targeted by ISIS. Some young girls were “cheaply sold” and mainly given to young boys as a way of recruiting them into the ISIS ranks.  ISIS itself publically encourages that taking of women as spoils of war and as a form of punishment of those they consider “infidels.” The organization claimed “One should remember that enslaving the families of the kuffar — the infidels — and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Shariah, or Islamic law,” in the ISIS propaganda publication “Dabiq.”

Kurdish authorities say they have rescued around 100 Yazidi women, in part through the payment of ransoms to Arab tribesmen who acted as intermediaries. However, thousands of women remain enslaved by the ISIS group.

For More Information Please See:

CNN International – ‘Treated Like Cattle’: Yazidi Women Sold, Raped, Enslaved By ISIS – 30 October 2014

CNN International – Why ISIS’s Treatment of Yazidi Women Must Be Treated As Genocide – 30 October 2014

International Business Times – ISIS News: ‘Raped, Abused’ Yazidi Women Beg West To Bomb Their Brothel and Kill Them [VIDEO] – 30 October 2014

Al Jazeera – Traumatized By ISIL, Yazidis Seek Help – 28 October 2014

By Max Bartels 

Impunity Watch Reporter, The Middle East 

 

Tehran, Iran 

A 26-year-old woman, Reyhaneh Jabbari, was hanged on Saturday after she was sentenced to death for murder. The execution has human rights groups questioning the validity of the trial because the woman claimed self-defense and the man she killed was her alleged rapist. The woman was originally sentenced to death after her trial in 2009, where it was decided that she killed a man who was a former employee of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security. The U.N released a statement saying that the man hired Jabbari when she was 19 as an interior designer, to work on his office, and that Jabbari stabbed him after she was sexually assaulted.

Since her original conviction and sentence in 2009, Iran’s Supreme Court upheld the verdict, even in the face of considerable international pressure from the U.S. and Europe. The pressure did succeed in getting Jabbari a 10- day stay of execution in late September, and many were hopeful that some other punishment would be handed down during that time. Under the Iranian Islamic Penal Code, the courts of Iran follow “an eye for an eye” concept, when a murder is committed, the defendant, if found guilty must face the same fate. Also under the Iranian Islamic Penal code there is a provision for the family of the victim to show mercy to the defendant, if the family so wishes the death sentence can be lessened. Many were hoping that the family of the victim would exercise this right on Jabbari, due to the public outcry in support of her case. A Justice Minister of the Supreme Court even stated in early October that he predicted that the case would come to a “good ending”. However, the family stayed silent and the execution process resumed after the 10- day stay.

The Tehran state prosecutors office issued a statement attempting to curtail sympathy for Jabbari, and lay out the facts of the case as they saw them. According to them Jabbari had repeatedly admitted to premeditated murder and had invented the rape charge in an attempt to divert the case from its course. The office laid out further evidence that Jabbari had texted a friend her intention to kill and had bought the knife used in the murder just a few days prior to the crime.

The execution has sparked renewed criticism of Iran and the new President, Rouhani, who was touted for his positions on bringing Iran out of isolation. The U.N. has documented the number of executions in the country at 531 this year, this is a marked increased from previous years and puts Iran at second in the world for recorded use of capital punishment, behind China. Secular voters in Iran are upset that domestic reform has taken a back seat to foreign policy under Rouhani. Others believe that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the judiciary, both still filled with hardline Islamists are increasing the rate of execution to make Rouhani look bad.

For more information, please see:

CNN — Iran Postponed Execution of Woman Who Killed her Alleged Rapist — 2 October, 2014

MSNBC — Iranian Woman Hanged for Killing her Alleged Would-Be Rapist — October 27 2014 

The Independent — Reyhaneh Jabbari  in Iran for Murder of Her Attempted Rapist — October 25, 2014

Reuters — Iran Hangs Woman Convicted of Killing Alleged Rapist — October 25, 2014

By Max Bartels

Impunity Watch Reporter, The Middle East

 

Baghdad, Iraq 

The predominantly Shia government of Iraq has been accused of giving Shia militant groups impunity to terrorize the Sunni population in response to the attacks by the predominately Sunni forces of ISIS. The government of Iraq has responded that it fairly governs all its citizens, Shia’s and Sunni alike. The Iraqi government has been unable to halt the advance of ISIS as it rolls across Northern Iraq, Amnesty groups have said that it is now mostly Shia militant groups that have been in combat with ISIS forces.

The Shia militia groups are estimated to a combine to be in the tens of thousands. After ISIS seized the Northern Iraqi city of Mosul, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called for volunteers to reinforce the military, who had suffered several defeats to ISIS forces. The Shia militias answered the call; they have military equipment and operate with impunity across Iraq but do not formally answer to the Iraqi government and are not prosecuted for crimes they commit.

The Shia militias have ben accused of abducting hundreds of Sunni civilians in response to terror attacks by ISIS targeting Shia civilians. There have been stories reported to Amnesty International, telling how even after their families have paid the ransom demanded by the militias the abductees were still killed by the militias. Ransoms have been reported to be as high as $80,000 for Sunni’s that are abducted, in most cases the average Iraqi can’t afford to pay such a high ransom.

Sunni insurgents, mainly ISIS fighters and operatives have targeted Shia neighborhoods in Baghdad and across Iraq with car bombs and other attacks. The Shia militias respond with kidnappings and killings and the cycle continues. The Iraqi government is powerless to combat either group. ISIS has already proven to be too much to handle for the Iraq military, capturing large swaths of Iraqi territory. On the other hand, the government needs the Shia militias for their own protection, they don’t have the power to fight ISIS on their own and rely on the numbers that the militias can bring to combat ISIS. The Iraqi military has had difficulty recruiting soldiers to fight ISIS, the Shia militias are much better at recruiting members to fight ISIS and is one of the main reasons why the militias have taken large responsibilities in the defense of Iraqi territory.

For more information, please see:

BBC News — Iraq: Shia Militias “Killing Sunnis in Reprisal Attacks” — 14 October 2014

ABC News — Rights Groups: Iraq Shiite Militants Killing Sunnis — 14 October 2014

CBC News — Iraq’s Shia Militias Kill Sunni Civillians in Retaliation Against ISIS, Amnesty Says — 14 October 2014

The Independent — Iraq Descends into Anarchy: Shia Militias Abducting and Killing Sunni Civilians in Revenge for ISIS Attacks — 14 October 2014 

By Kathryn Maureen Ryan
Managing Editor, Impunity Watch

JERUSALEM, Israel/Palestine – Israel’s military offensive against Hamas in Gaza during, which approximately 2,100 Palestinians and 73 Israelis lost their lives over the course 50-days, drew commendation from members of the international community. Among the most highly criticized operations that took place during the conflict was an Israeli air and artillery bombardment carried out on August 1^st that killed 150 people in a matter of hours, the events of which unfolded just as a three-day ceasefire was supposed to enter into effect. Hamas militants emerged from a tunnel inside the Gaza Strip and ambushed three Israeli solders, killing two and taking the third hostage. Hamas representatives claimed the ambush was carried out before the ceasefire was scheduled to take effect while the Israeli military claims it was carried out after. Israeli reacted to the ambush and kidnapping of an Israel solder by invoking the controversial Hannibal Directive.

The Hannibal Directive is a protocol that calls on Israeli Defense Forces to rescue a captured solider, dead or alive, to ensure that Hamas cannot use the soldier as a hostage. The Israeli Army allegedly invoked the Hannibal directive as an order compelling units to do everything they can to recover an abducted comrade.

The order led to a furious assault on a confined area on the eastern edge of Rafah, the largest city in southern Gaza. The city is home to around 200,000 people. Israeli artillery and tanks bombarded four neighborhoods for several hours – at times firing a shell a minute. Fighter jets also carried out air strikes in the area. Medics in Gaza say around 200 people were wounded, the majority of whom were civilians. 150 people were killed during the bombardments making August 1^st the deadliest day of the seven week conflict. Some legal experts say the use of the Hannibal Directive in this matter, which called on the Israeli military to use any means necessary, including the targeting of areas heavily inhabited by civilians, may have constituted a war crime.

The Israel Defense Forces have not clearly defined the Hannibal Directive. The Hannibal directive was first drafted in 1986 after three soldiers from the Givati Brigade were captured in Lebanon. Their saw the vehicle getting away and did not open fire on the captors. Israel has in the past paid a heavy political price for kidnapped soldiers. In 2006, Gilad Shalit was seized near Gaza and spent five years in Hamas captivity. He was released in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. Critics say the Hannibal directive throws international humanitarian law out of the window in the interests of preventing a hostage situation, not only are civilians in the conflict thrown in the crossfire but the directive itself also suggests that the goal of the Israeli military should be to prevent hostage situations at all costs, even concluding that it is better to have a dead soldier than a captured one.

In the weeks since August 1^st, civil rights activists, international legal experts and even some Israeli military officers have raised concerns about the legality and morality of the assault. One specific reservation is whether the attack was proportionate and discriminate, specifically whether the abduction of a single soldier could have justified a heavy and relentless use of force in a heavily populated area.

A panel set up by the United Nations’ Human Rights Commission is due to start investigating potential abuses in the war by both sides in the near future, with the August 1^st incident in Rafah set as one of several incidents investigators have indicated they will examine. The head of the U.N. Human Rights Commission panel investigating the Gaza war has said any evidence it gathers could be used by the International Criminal Court in a potential war crimes case against Israel. The panel’s final report is due by March next year.

For more information please see:

Al Arabiya – Egyptian foreign policy stages comeback after Gaza summit – 13 October 2014
Reuters – Did Israel’s ‘Hannibal directive’ lead to a war crime in Gaza? – 13 October 2014
BBC News – Palestinian leader accuses Israel of ‘genocide’ at UN – 26 September 2014
The Times of Israel – IDF disputes death toll after Rafah kidnap attempt – 22 September 2014