The human rights organization, Human Rights Watch, accused the Iraqi military of mass tortures and murders. An elite unit, the soldiers of which were trained by instructors from the United States.
According to HRW, during the liberation of Mosul, soldiers extrajudicially killed those they suspected of having connections to ISIS. And more evidence has come to light of the atrocities that are happening in Iraq with the knowledge and supervision of the American military. These photos are extremely graphic.
Children or highly sensitive people should not see these photos. Here's Anton Lyadov. He falls to his knees and gets up again. He is blindfolded, and he hardly understands that he is surrounded by desert. He thinks that there is still a chance to escape. He is still running. The third shot finds his head. It's over. A man is hung up by his arms while he is kicked and punched.
The abuser has a satisfied grin on his face. These materials were published by a photographer named Ali Arkadi. He was embedded with Iraqi special forces in 2014, when he filmed them as they battled ISIS. Therefore, when in November 2016 the battle for Mosul began, the head of the unit took him with him. We worked together every day. We slept under one roof. I spent more time with them than with my family. I considered them heroes. But then I saw their other side — the torture, the rape, and the murder. At first, they didn’t want me to film it, but then they gave permission. I didn’t immediately realize what I saw.
These horrific shots haunted me — they squeezed out prisoners’ eyes, and knifed prisoners. Here is a man with a gun looking at young children, who are hiding under blankets. Photographer Ali Arkadi couldn’t stand it and published the photos. My family received many threats from the Rapid Reaction Division, especially from Captain Omar Nazar. He wrote to my father on Facebook (запрещена в РФ) that they would come at night and kill my relatives. They couldn’t contact me because I'm in hiding. But, of course, I understand that my life is in danger. An important detail — we are talking about soldiers of the so-called elite units, which were trained by American instructors.
The fact that the soldiers of the Iraqi army extrajudicially executed dozens of people in Mosul was announced yesterday by an international organization headquartered in the USA. Human Rights Watch demanded the suspension of support of the Iraqi military until there's an investigation. The reports speak of numerous cases of Iraqi servicemen committing extrajudicial executions against people who, in their opinion, were associated with terrorists. They simply killed them on the battlefield without an investigation nor a trial. In response to a question asked by one of our colleagues from RT about the footage provided by photographer Ali Arkadi, the representative of the US State Department said, “We are not aware of these materials.”
