A/HRC/38/44/Add.1 systematic and direct attacks on civilians. 12 Methods of attacks on civilians by ISIL included shelling, mortar rounds, sniper fire, landmines, car bombs and explosives dropped from drones. In addition, there are reports that ISIL may have employed weaponized chemical agents (chlorine and mustard gas) during attacks in and around Mosul. 24. ISIL imposed strict gender rules for social behaviour for both women and men, torturing and killing those they deemed not in conformity with those rules. The group also created an extensive, hierarchical “court” system,13 which tried and sentenced civilians with virtually no fair trial guarantees.14 The group ran detention facilities managed by various entities: the Islamic police, the military police, the morality police, raid squads, and security forces. 15 Each entity had its own conditions and methods of detention and punishment, including torture. 16 The Special Rapporteur believes that the many reported killings and other violations by ISIL are evidence of their systematic persecution of persons based on gender and gender expression, alone or in intersection with other identity markers, including religion and ethnicity. 25. ISIL carried out numerous executions by, inter alia, beheading, hanging, stoning, drowning, shooting, burning and throwing persons off buildings, including following “sentences” issued by ISIL self-appointed courts. Executions were often preceded by enforced disappearances and the perpetrators of the executions included children who, following indoctrination, were forced to function as executioners. The remains of those killed were often put on public display as a warning to others not to oppose ISIL. The unthinkable and horrific examples of these executions of men, women and children are numerous. 26. ISIL targeted specifically those opposing or not aligning themselves with its Takfiri doctrines or attempting to flee its rule. Victims included leaders, members of religious and ethnic minorities, members of certain professions, in particular female teachers and doctors, as well as media professionals, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons, persons caught smoking or not praying correctly and anyone associated with the Government of Iraq. The Special Rapporteur heard accounts of brutal sexual enslavement, shooting, beheading, stoning and burning to death of men, women and children, including those perceived as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex, simply for defying the rigid gender policies of ISIL. 27. The Special Rapporteur received reports of executions of women carried out by ISIL in areas under its control, some following decisions by ISIL-appointed courts, including the stoning of three women by ISIL in late 2016 in Mosul and Kirkuk on charges of adultery. In one case, it is reported that the actual reason for stoning was the refusal of the victim to marry an ISIL fighter. The public was encouraged to participate in the stoning. Three other women were executed by ISIL in Mosul in August 2016 for their perceived homosexuality. In June 2016, 19 Yazidi women were allegedly burned to death for refusing to have sexual intercourse with ISIL fighters. In September 2016, two female lawyers were shot dead by ISIL in Mosul for carrying out their professional duties in a criminal court. In addition, several reports have emerged of ISIL executing homosexual men by throwing them off buildings, and, if they survived the fall, stoning them to death in a public event. Examples include two men thrown to their deaths in November 2015 in Fallujah and another two men in early 2016 in the cities of Rawah and Tel Afar. 12 13 14 15 16 UNAMI and Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), “Report on the protection of civilians in the context of the Ninewa Operations and the retaking of Mosul City, 17 October 2016–10 July 2017”, p. 2. Charles C. Caris and Samuel Reynolds, “Middle East security report 22: ISIS Governance in Syria”, pp. 18-19. See www.hrw.org/report/2016/05/18/we-feel-we-are-cursed/life-under-isis-sirte-libya. See www.researchgate.net/publication/319043844_The_ISIS_Prison_System_Its_Structure_ Departmental_Affiliations_Processes_Conditions_and_Practices_of_Psychological_and _Physical_Torture. Ibid. 7