VP/HR — Iraqi security forces target insurgents' wives
27.2.2014
Question for written answer E-002307-14
to the Commission (Vice-President/High Representative)
Rule 117
Fiorello Provera (EFD)
In early February 2014, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that Iraqi security forces were torturing the wives of suspected Iraqi insurgents. The organisation had interviewed 27 female detainees in prison, along with employees from the Iraqi prison service and from the Ministry for the Interior and the Ministry for Human Rights, in order to gather information for its report. HRW believes the evidence gathered shows that the country’s security services have cultivated a culture of impunity. One judge interviewed spoke of four fellow judges — all with close links to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — who had provided legal cover for human rights abuses.
Women who have been detained claim to have suffered weeks of beatings, rape and electrocution by interrogators, who sometimes threaten to arrest their daughters. This culture of sexual violence is extremely common, but the inspector-general of Iraq’s Interior Ministry said that the abuse was the work of a few ‘monsters’ from the regime of the late Saddam Hussein.
In November 2012, Iraq’s federal police raided 11 homes in the town of Taji in the Sunni Triangle, north of Baghdad, detaining 11 women and 29 children. During their detention, police put bags over their heads until they began to suffocate, and some were electrocuted and even beaten. In another case, a female journalist accused of being married to an al-Qaeda member alleged that she had been tied up and repeatedly raped by an interrogator.
1. Is the Vice-President/High Representative aware of accounts of sexual abuse and violence against Iraqi women and children related to suspected members of insurgent groups?
2. Is the VP/HR prepared to address these concerns directly with Prime Minister al-Maliki?
3. What is the VP/HR’s assessment of the findings of HRW, which believes there is a culture of impunity within the ranks of Iraq’s security services?
OJ C 320, 17/09/2014