Crimes against humanity in Mosul must not go unpunished – Amnesty

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) Amnesty International called on Tuesday for a commission to investigate crimes against civilians in Mosul by all sides in the battle to liberate the Iraqi city from Islamic State (IS) terror group.

Lynn Maalouf, director of Middle East research at Amnesty International, said, “the scale and gravity of the loss of civilian lives during the military operation to retake Mosul must immediately be publicly acknowledged at the highest levels of government in Iraq and states that are part of the US-led coalition”.

Amnesty documented crimes carried out by the IS since October 2016, such as IS violations: forced displacement, summary killings and use of human shields.

On the other hand, Amnesty accused the Iraqi forces and US-led coalition of carrying out unlawful attack and the use of imprecise and explosive weapons, noting that they “failed to adapt their tactics to this reality and continued to use imprecise and explosive weapons with wide area effects in densely populated urban environments”.

“The horrors that the people of Mosul have witnessed and the disregard for human life by all parties to this conflict must not go unpunished,” she added. “An independent commission must immediately be established, tasked with ensuring that any instances where there is credible evidence that violations of international law took place, effective investigations are carried out and the findings made public”.

The Amnesty report comes after the Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s victory declaration in the city of Mosul on Monday.

The long-awaited victory in Mosul ends an eight-month campaign backed by a U.S.-led coalition and paramilitary forces which has displaced more than 900.000 civilians. It also means an effective collapse of the Islamic State’s self-styled “caliphate” declared from Mosul’s Old City by the group’s supreme leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.