A/HRC/28/18
were saved by other bodies landing on top of them. ISIL fighters kept shooting into the
ravine at any moving body, including men who were screaming in pain.
2.
Politically motivated attacks
29.
Interviews with victims and witnesses, corroborated by reliable sources, have led the
mission to reasonably conclude that there has been a pattern of attacks by members of ISIL
against those it perceives to be affiliated with the Government. Targets include police
officers, members of the Iraqi armed forces, the Awakening Movement, 7 public servants,
members of parliament, tribal and religious leaders, candidates in parliamentary and
legislative elections and those who had publicly criticized, or were perceived to be opposed
to, ISIL. Those violations were not based on perceived ethnic or religious identity but
targeted Iraqis, usually Sunnis, deemed to be linked to the Government, or who refused to
pledge allegiance to ISIL.
30.
The mission interviewed men and women from the Al-Jebouri, Albu Hishma and
Albu Nimr tribes who had fled their homes in Diyala, Salah ad-Din and Anbar
governorates. ISIL fighters are reported to have relied on lists of targets to conduct houseto-house and checkpoint searches. Numerous men allegedly disappeared after being taken
by ISIL from their homes or workplace or at checkpoints. Several relatives who witnessed
those arrests stated that the victims were forced to “repent” by ISIL.8
31.
The mission received information about several politically motivated killings. At
least 602 members of the Albu Nimr tribe were allegedly killed in six separate incidents
between September 2014 and January 2015 in Anbar province. Witnesses reported that, on
28 October 2014, 48 people — including seven children aged between 13 and 18 — were
summarily executed in Hit in Anbar governorate and that, on 29 October, 213 tribesmen
were allegedly summarily executed in Al-Furat. A police officer from Mosul who managed
to escape recounted how “on 10 June, my two brothers were stopped and shot at an ISIL
checkpoint at al-Karama district in Mosul”. A former police officer recounted that in midJune 2014, in Tikrit, “ISIL fighters asked me for my police ID card; when I showed them,
one of them took a knife and cut the throat of my father, my five-year-old boy and my fivemonth-old daughter. I begged them to kill me instead, but they told me: “we want to make
you suffer, we want you to feel it burns inside your heart”.
32.
Based on interviews with survivors, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq
reported that approximately 1,500 to 1,700 members of the Iraqi armed forces from Camp
Speicher in Salah ad-Din governorate were summarily executed on 12 June 2014 by ISIL,
allegedly after being captured or having surrendered. The mission interviewed people who
went to Camp Speicher after the massacre and had seen numerous dead bodies in the streets
around the military base and in some parts of Tikrit. The results of a government
investigation into that incident are yet to be made public.
33.
Numerous reports of ISIL looting, burning and destroying houses were received. As
a woman from Yathrib, Salah ad-Din governorate, lamented: “In August, after the fall of
Yathrib, ISIL fighters forced me out of my home with my children and made me watch the
destruction of my house. Years of my life have gone. We Sunni Arabs have nowhere to go,
we are targeted by everybody.” Similar accounts were provided by numerous other victims
who fled ISIL violence.
7
8
8
The Awakening Councils (Sahwa) consist of tribal sheikhs who joined forces with the United States
military in the fight against Al-Qaida in Iraq from 2006.
Reportedly, the “repentant” has three options: “repent” in a Mosque in the presence of an ISIL
appointed “emir”, pay 1,000,000 Iraqi dinar (850 United States dollars) or face execution.
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