HRW: Iraqi militias detaining men fleeing Mosul

Human Rights Watch has accused Iraqi militias of secretly detaining men fleeing from Mosul, allegedly screening them for membership of the Islamic State group.

Fighters with the Popular Mobilisation Units (PMUs) have been accused of abducting men fleeing the Mosul fighting and keeping them in unidentified detention centres for interrogation where, according to HRW, they are at "heightened risk of abuse, including arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance".

“In case after case, relatives are telling us that their male family members are being stopped by PMU fighters and disappearing,” said Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

“While we cannot know exactly what has happened to the men detained, the lack of transparency, particularly for their families as to their whereabouts, is cause for real concern.”

According to a family interview by HRW from a village near Mosul, PMU fighters had abducted five men from the village of Nzara after evacuating the rest of the village to a refugee camp. The five men later appeared on a television broadcast identified as IS militants.

The report cites a number of similar incidents across Iraq with PMUs taking away men without explanation for interrogation. Often this takes place after families have already been subjected to official military screenings.

The PMUs have not been given official mandate to carry out screenings, and according to HRW, have not been trained to carry out screening, raising concerns about mistreatment.

“Some men appear to be vanishing into the night even after official screenings by Iraqi security forces confirmed they were not on their wanted lists,” said Fakih. “It is crucial for the authorities to take all measures to ensure that their whereabouts are known and the scale of detention is documented.”

The PMUs are a mixture of organisations, including groups that came into existence following a call to arms from Iraq's highest Shia authority, Ali al-Sistani, in 2014, as well as previously existing paramilitary groups - many linked to Iran.

Although the PMUs were officially integrated into the army in November, they still maintain a great deal of autonomy and have been highly controversial over accusations of mistreating prisoners and carrying out indiscriminate sectarian retributions.

Last week, Iraqi forces retook the last area of Mosul east of the Tigris River, 100 days into an offensive whose next phase aid groups warned could have dire consequences for civilians.

Army units flushed out fighters of IS from a rural area on the northern edge of Mosul, completing an important step in Iraq's largest military operation in years.

"The Iraqi flag was raised and the left side (east bank) was thus fully liberated," the Joint Operations Command coordinating the fight against IS said in a statement.

Commanders from the elite Counter-Terrorism Service, which has done most of the fighting, and Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi had already declared east Mosul "liberated" last week.

The three months it took to reconquer Mosul's east saw some tough fighting, but even deadlier battles are expected on its west bank, home to the narrow streets of the Old City and some of IS's traditional redoubts.

That has sparked deep concern among the aid community over the fate of the estimated 750,000 civilians still believed to live in western Mosul.

"We hope that everything is done to protect the hundreds of thousands of people who are across the river in the west," the United Nations' humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, Lise Grande, said in a statement.

"We know that they are at extreme risk and we fear for their lives."

Tens of thousands of security forces now surround the militants in west Mosul, who are all but trapped in the city where their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed his "caliphate" in 2014.