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A wounded survivor of the mass killing of Badoush Prison inmates by ISIS on June 10,
2014. (© Human Rights Watch 2014) |
By
HRW
Gunmen from the Sunni extremist group Islamic State systematically
executed some 600 male inmates from a prison outside the northern Iraqi
city of Mosul on June 10, 2014, according to survivors’ accounts. The
vast majority of those killed were Shia.
After seizing Badoush Prison near Mosul, the gunmen from Islamic State,
also known as ISIS, separated the Sunni from the Shia inmates, then
forced the Shia men to kneel along the edge of a nearby ravine and shot
them with assault rifles and automatic weapons, 15 Shia prisoners who
survived the massacre told Human Rights Watch. The gunmen also killed a
number of Kurdish and Yezidi inmates of Badoush Prison, the survivors
said.
“The gruesome details of ISIS’ mass murder of prison inmates make it
impossible to deny the depravity of this extremist group,” said
Letta Tayler,
senior terrorism and counterterrorism researcher. “People of every
ethnicity and creed should condemn these horrific tactics, and press
Iraqi and international authorities to bring those responsible to
justice.”
The mass summary executions amount to war crimes and most likely crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said.
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"M.A.," a survivor of the ISIS mass killing of some 600 inmates from Badoush Prison
near Mosul, Iraq, on June 10, 2014. © 2014 Human Rights Watch
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ISIS fighters broke into Badoush the day they captured Mosul,
Iraq’s
second-largest city, which is 10 kilometers southeast of the prison.
The gunmen herded up to 1,500 inmates onto trucks and drove them to an
isolated stretch of desert about 2 kilometers from the prison, survivors
said. The prisoners had been serving sentences for a range of crimes,
from murder and assaults to nonviolent offenses.
The fighters separated out several hundred Sunni and a small number
of Christian men and drove them away in trucks, the witnesses said. They
then robbed and insulted the Shia and other remaining prisoners,
marched them to a ravine, and forced them to form one long line along
its edge. There, they made the inmates count their number in the line
before opening fire. A survivor, A.S., described the death count:
They started by saying, “Each person raise his hand and say his
number.” I was number 43. I heard them say “615,” and then one ISIS guy
said, “We’re going to eat well tonight.” A man behind us asked, “Are you
ready?” Another person answered “Yes,” and began shooting at us with a
machine-gun. Then they all started to shoot us from behind, going down
the row.
Human Rights Watch is withholding the prisoners’ full names to protect them from possible retaliation.
Nine survivors Human Rights Watch interviewed said that they heard their
fellow inmates at the end of the line call out numbers from the low
500s to 750. Five of them heard numbers between 615 and 680, while other
survivors said the count went into the “hundreds.”
Most people were shot in the head, the back and the side, said survivor H.K.:
A bullet hit my head and I fell to the ground, and that’s when I felt
another bullet hit my arm. I was unconscious for about 5 minutes. One
person was shot in the head, in the forehead, it [the bullet] went out
the other side, and he fell on top of me.
Before they started shooting, I managed to kiss the men on each side
of me, because we knew we were going to die. After we said goodbye to
each other, I took my daughter’s picture and kissed it, and I prayed to
God to save me for her, because I have no one else [to take care of
her].
The gunmen returned for a second round of shooting when they saw one
prisoner stand up, and only stopped when they ran out of ammunition, the
survivors said.
“They were shouting, ‘This is how we serve justice!’ and, ‘This one’s
alive, shoot him again!” witness F.S. said. “I got shot. Then I heard
someone say, ‘Let’s leave, we’re out of bullets.’”
Most of those shot fell into the ravine, the survivors said. The gunmen
then set fire to brush in and around the ravine, and flames spread to
the corpses.
The witnesses estimated that 30 to 40 prisoners survived, most by
rolling into the ravine and pretending to be dead, or because they were
shielded by the bodies of other prisoners who fell on top of them.
Survivors said several men wounded by the shooting later died while
trying to crawl or stagger away.
ISIS fighters drove the prisoners claiming to be Sunnis and Christians
for about four hours to another desert location, one Sunni man who was
among that group told Human Rights Watch. He was unable to identify the
location but said some in the group believed it was in Iraq’s Anbar
province while others thought it might have been in Syria. The witness
said that on the first evening ISIS fighters removed between 50 and 100
men from this group on grounds that they were Shia posing as Sunni. He
said they did not return. Three days later ISIS fighters drove the
others back to Mosul and set them free, he said.
Human Rights Watch interviewed the 15 Shia survivors and four other
former Badoush Prison inmates in semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, where
they had surrendered or been picked up by local authorities after
fleeing ISIS-controlled areas. The interviews took place in two prisons
where the Iraqi Kurdish authorities were holding the men. Nearly all the
Shia prisoners showed scars from bullet wounds or burns that they said
they had sustained during the massacre.
The injured survivors had received medical care. All Arab survivors said
they wanted to be moved to prisons outside of Iraqi Kurdistan because
their relatives could not visit them in Kurdish-controlled areas. On
October 23, the Kurdish Regional Government said the inmates had been
transferred to other prisons that are run by the central Iraqi
government still located in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Twelve of the inmates told Human Rights Watch that officials and guards
at Badoush Prison had abandoned their posts the night before ISIS broke
into the prison.
Neither Human Rights Watch nor Iraqi government officials have been able
to access Badoush Prison or the alleged killing site because the area
remains under ISIS control.
ISIS has systematically
killed, abducted, and expelled Shia Muslims and religious and ethnic minorities during its military sweep through Iraq, and has
forcibly married Yezidi women and girls to ISIS gunmen.
The day after the June 10 massacre, ISIS gunmen carried out a similar
mass killing of Shia soldiers in the city of Tikrit, 225 kilometers
south of Badoush. The group claimed to have executed 1,700 Shia troops
in that killing and posted videos on the internet showing their gunmen
shooting at hundreds of captive men.
A Human Rights Watch
investigation
that included analysis of satellite imagery found strong evidence that
between 560 to 770 captives, all or most of them apparently Iraqi
soldiers, died in that massacre, and did not rule out that many more had
been killed.
Human Rights Watch also documented the
apparent unlawful executions
of at least 255 Sunni prisoners in six Iraqi cities and villages in
June by Iraqi government forces, most of whom are Shia, and by Shia
pro-government militia.
The United Nations Human Rights Council in September ordered a UN
investigation into crimes committed by ISIS. That investigation should
include the massacre near Badoush Prison to identify those responsible
and ensure they are held to account, Human Rights Watch said. The UN
investigation also should document major crimes by Iraqi government
forces and Shia pro-government militias including
indiscriminate airstrikes,
mass executions of Sunni prisoners, and
summary executions of Sunnis throughout the country.
The UN investigation also should examine whether the Iraqi authorities could have done more
to protect the Badoush prisoners and Mosul residents from ISIS, Human Rights Watch said.
“While no amount of government negligence excuses the atrocities of
ISIS, the authorities need to do all they reasonably can to protect Shia
and others from being massacred,” Tayler said. “In addition, the Iraqi
authorities should as soon as possible transfer the survivors of this
slaughter to prisons in areas of Iraq where they can have regular family
visits.”
Witness Accounts
Human Rights Watch conducted separate, individual interviews with 11 of
the Shia survivors, the Sunni inmate who ISIS released, and three
Badoush inmates – one Yezidi and two Sunni – who escaped capture the
morning of June 10. All provided detailed and consistent accounts. Human
Rights Watch interviewed four other Shia survivors together who also
said ISIS segregated Sunni and Shia prisoners and killed the Shia.
The Shia and Sunni survivors said most of their family members could not
visit them in Iraqi Kurdistan because of the risk of passing through
conflict zones to reach them, and the Kurdistan Regional Government’s
restrictions on the entry of Arabs into Iraqi Kurdistan since ISIS
seized large swaths of Iraq.
The witnesses’ descriptions of the mass shooting were consistent with
the findings of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, which
concluded that ISIS had killed up to 670 Shia inmates of Badoush near the prison on June 10.
Guards Flee, ISIS Enters
The day before the attack, guards at Badoush Prison gave inmates almost
no food, then fled in the middle of the night, said the survivors and
the three other men who had been imprisoned in Badoush at that time.
At the time of the attack, the prison was holding more than 3,000
prisoners in two large cell blocks, one for major crimes and the other
for lesser crimes, according to the witnesses, as well as prison and
intelligence authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan who spoke with Human Rights
Watch. The prison had a separate section for Yezidis, Christians, and
other religious and ethnic minorities.
On June 9, most prisoners received only one piece of bread and no
bottled water, the inmates said. One prisoner, H.O., said a guard told
him the prison ran out of food because fighting had blocked the arrival
of supply trucks from Mosul. As the sound of fighting grew louder that
night, some witnesses said, the guards triple-locked the prisoners’ cell
doors. H.O. described the inmates’ panic:
We couldn’t even go to the toilet. Those of us who needed medicine,
we started shouting and screaming because we were not getting our pills.
There were about 50 of us in our cell, screaming. We were also shouting
for water. We had only dirty tap water to drink. No one responded.
“We stopped seeing the guards after midnight – they ran,” said
another prisoner, A.J. He slid one hand against the other in a gesture
of flight.
Before dawn, guards came to the Yezidis’ cell, containing 90 inmates, and said they were leaving, said the Yezidi prisoner, R.K.
The guards had changed into civilian clothes. They told us, “Mosul
has fallen to ISIS. Escape if you can.” But the cell door was locked. It
was chaos inside. We thought if ISIS enters they would behead us all,
because in that section we were Christians, Kurds, Yezidis.
The former prisoners said they heard intense shelling overnight.
Between about 6 and 8 a.m., they said, ISIS fighters broke into the
prison and, assisted by ISIS members who were inmates, broke open the
cell doors. Many prisoners who fled immediately, including R.K., managed
to escape. But those who left around 10 a.m. found the prison
surrounded by scores of ISIS gunmen, both on foot and in dozens of Iraqi
police cars, Humvees and other military vehicles, which they assumed
the fighters had captured from Iraqi government soldiers and police.
Human Rights Watch interviewed dozens of Mosul residents and law
enforcement officials between June and September who said that Iraq’s
security forces had fled Mosul before ISIS entered the city.
ISIS Rounds Up Inmates
ISIS gunmen immediately began rounding up prison inmates who tried to
leave and cordoned them inside the prison courtyard, 14 witnesses told
Human Rights Watch. The gunmen also retrieved prisoners who were trying
to flee on Route 1, the main road from the prison, the witnesses said.
“Anyone who tried to stop a car, ISIS would shoot at their feet,”
witness S.S. said. “If anyone had already gotten into a car, they
stopped the driver and made the prisoner get out.”
The ISIS forces were wearing clothes that ranged from track suits and
dishdashas
to all black or camouflage uniforms, the survivors said. Most of the
gunmen were Arabs from Iraq, but some spoke Arabic with foreign accents,
they said.
The fighters gathered as many as 1,500 inmates in the prison courtyard,
the witnesses estimated. Two survivors said they saw the fighters
summarily shoot and kill three or four prisoners in the courtyard who
identified themselves as Shia.
The fighters also searched unsuccessfully for three prisoners, whose
names they called out on a loudspeaker, three witnesses said. The gunmen
then commandeered several trucks passing by on Route 1, witnesses said,
including 18-wheel container trucks.
Some witnesses said they saw five or six trucks; others said they saw as
many as nine. In late morning, they said – three prisoners interviewed
separately estimated the time as around 11 a.m. – the fighters loaded
the prisoners onto the backs of the trucks. “They said, ‘We will take
you home.’ Then they forced us onto the trucks,” witness F.S. told Human
Rights Watch.
The fighters drove the prisoners along Route 1 to the Sham Gate, about 4
kilometers southeast of Badoush Prison, the survivors said. “They were
showing us to the people passing by, pretending they had freed us from
the Iraqi government,” said survivor N.H. “The people were praising them
for saving us.”
But then the trucks turned back toward the prison, the survivors said,
and after about a kilometer turned left into the desert on a road that
was just tracks through the sand.
Two other inmates who had managed to escape when ISIS first took control
of Badoush Prison told Human Rights Watch that ISIS gunmen had rounded
them up with others on the roadside or in nearby Badoush village, and
loaded them into trucks that also turned off Route 1 and into the
desert.
After a short drive of what some survivors estimated as 800 meters to a
kilometer from Route 1, the trucks stopped and gunmen ordered all the
prisoners to gather by the side of the dirt track.
The prisoners were not certain of the exact route and distances to the
killing site, and some gave slightly different accounts of how they got
there. All said they were not from the area and were in shock during the
drive. One Iraqi human rights investigator said other Badoush inmates
who escaped on June 10 told him that ISIS also killed Shia prisoners in
two other nearby locations that day.
Sunnis Separated from Shia
Once in the desert, a group of 20 to 40 gunmen then separated the Sunni
Arabs from the prisoners of other sects or ethnicities, according to 12
Shia survivors and one Sunni witness.
A bearded man in a
dishdasha appeared to be in command, several
witnesses said. Six said they believed the man was Afghan because of
his accent and the cut of his robe. They said the gunmen called the man
Hajji, a title of respect. Witness M.R. described the “Afghan man’s” orders:
He was sitting in a police car and calling out to us on a
loudspeaker. He said, “the Sunnis must stand on one side. The Shia,
Kurds and Yezidis must stand on the other. If I find out that a Shia is
among the Sunnis, I’m going to cut off his head with a sheet of metal.”
During quick interrogations by the gunmen about their beliefs, names,
hometowns and other details, about half of the men identified
themselves as Sunni. The gunmen loaded these men onto four or five
trucks and drove them away, the witnesses said. Three witnesses said
those driven away included up to 100 Shia prisoners posing as Sunnis.
H.K. said the fighters placed about 15 to 20 Kurds and Yezidis with the
group of Shia men, including two Yezidi boys who had been held in the
juvenile section of Badoush Prison. Another prisoner said a Christian
man was also among those segregated from the Sunnis.
About half the fighters stayed and guarded the several hundred prisoners
who remained, the survivors said. “Brothers, don’t worry. You’ll have a
reunion with your family,” witness S.S. remembered one of the captors
saying. The gunmen told the prisoners that they were in discussions with
the Iraqi authorities about exchanging them for Sunni prisoners held by
government forces, three survivors told Human Rights Watch.
Insulted and Robbed
ISIS fighters insulted the remaining prisoners, using religious slurs
and accusing the Shia of subservience to then-Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri
al-Maliki, the survivors said. Then the fighters robbed them.
“They took everything from us – money, watches, rings, identity cards,”
A.J. said. “The moment they made us give up all of our possessions, I
knew they were going to kill us.”
By this time, the prisoners said, they felt faint, having received no
food or water for almost 24 hours. The fighters had told the prisoners
they were taking them to get food and water when they turned into the
desert, witness S.S. said, but on arrival told them: “You’ll have water
in paradise.”
At about noon, the survivors said, the gunmen ordered the Shia and other
remaining captives to walk in pairs for several meters from the side of
the desert track to a half-moon-shaped ravine about 2 to 4 meters deep.
The gunmen made the prisoners kneel in a single line along the ravine’s
curved rim.
ISIS shot dead the first inmate after he fell, said A.S., who had been next to the man:
He was so tired and weak from hunger and thirst that he started to
slide down into the ravine. They ordered him to come back but he waved
with his hands, refusing. One of the ISIS men said, “Kill him.” So the
other ISIS members shot him in the side and then in the neck.
The gunmen, at least two of whom wore masks, made each prisoner in
turn call out his number in the line, from one end to the other. Five
survivors said they heard the prisoners or the gunmen call out numbers
between 615 and 680. Three others said they heard the count go up to the
low 500s, and one man said he heard the number 750.
Many of the gunmen were young and “some were nervous,” said survivor
N.H., who said he was number 106. Others seemed pleased, he said,
including one who joked at the end of the count, “It’s a nice-size
herd.”
Several survivors said they saw a man filming the events with a video camera. No video of this massacre has been posted online.
“Let’s Kill Them All Together”
Three witnesses told Human Rights Watch that the gunmen appeared to be
receiving orders on two-way radios and were at times uncertain about how
to proceed. “First, they said they would kill us two by two,” survivor
N.H. said. “Then they said, ten by ten, and then they said, ‘kill them
all together.’”
Survivor S.S. said he heard the gunmen discussing whether to behead the prisoners:
One put his knife to an inmate’s neck, planning to cut his throat,
but the other guy said, “There are too many and we’re not enough, so
let’s kill them with bullets.” So he went to the first one and he fired
several shots into his back. Then they opened fire on all of us.
N.H. said that when the gunmen started shooting, “I thought, ‘Am I
already dead?’ Images of my family flooded my mind. I started reciting
the
shahada [the Islamic creed that begins, ‘There is no God
but God…’].” Meanwhile, the survivors said, some of the gunmen were also
chanting the
shahada, and shouting, God is great!
“It was as if we were all the same,” N.H. said, alluding to the
simultaneous prayers of both captives and captors. “But they were
killing us.”
A group of about 17 prisoners who were close to the end of the line
managed to flee when the shooting began, one of them, A.J., told Human
Rights Watch:
They started shooting at us. Some of my friends were killed or shot. A
bullet grazed my head. ISIS was surrounding us, but some were in front
of us and they were afraid their bullets would shoot their own people,
so they had to drop behind us. When we saw that we kept running. I fell
many times.
A.J. said he lay flat on the ground as ISIS members in cars scoured
the desert for survivors. “I heard two gunshots. After ISIS left I saw
two of my friends’ dead bodies. I kept running until I reached a street.
I saw a car and flagged it.”
As the gunmen sprayed the line of kneeling men with bullets, the dead
and wounded tumbled into the ravine, the witnesses said. Most of the
witnesses said they survived by rolling into the ravine along with the
dead.
But after shooting at everyone in the line, the gunmen descended into
the ravine as well, survivors said. Survivor A.O. said the men shot him
and a friend from prison who lay next to him:
My face was down in the sand. I heard the footsteps of the ISIS guy,
he was standing over me and he shot the man lying next to me in the
head. He shot me too but the bullet hit my right forearm. I heard death
gasps. I felt something coming under me. It was warm. It was the blood
of my friend Haider. I took some of that blood and put it on my face and
head so that if they came back they would think I am dead.
Survivor A.S. told Human Rights Watch that he used a small knife he
had managed to conceal from the fighters to cut his own head and neck so
that the blood would make it appear that he had been shot. After the
gunmen left, he said, he raised his head:
I saw one body without a leg, another with his head blown apart. One
man went up a nearby hill to see where ISIS was. One of their [ISIS’s]
cars saw that guy so they turned around and came back. We fell back to
the ground. They started to shoot at us again. Then one of the men from
ISIS told the others, “Let’s leave. We’re out of ammunition.”
Burning the Massacre Site
After the killings the gunmen set fire to brush on the ground and piles
of brush, the survivors told Human Rights Watch. The flames spread
quickly and began engulfing several of the freshly killed men, they
said.
Survivor M.A. said he saw 12 ISIS gunmen, 10 with machine-guns and 2 with AK-47 assault rifles, making the final rounds:
The ravine was in an agricultural area that had been recently
harvested. The remains of the harvest was food for cattle, and it burns
just like gasoline. They shot at the ground and it lit the area in front
of us. The fire spread quickly. They even set fire to the harvest on
the hill. We were surrounded and isolated.
M.A. said the gunmen shot and burned him when they set the fire:
They used a piece of wood to light the fire. They used it as a torch
to burn the dead bodies and to see who was dead and who was alive. When
they approached me, one of the Da'ish [ISIS] terrorists told someone
that I was still breathing, so after I got shot in my arm, they shot two
more bullets into my leg…. When it was my turn, they set my right leg
on fire. But I had to withstand the pain so they wouldn’t know that I
was still breathing. When they saw that I didn’t move, they told each
other that I was dead. Then they burned the person next to me.
M.A. showed Human Rights Watch bullet wounds in his thigh and arm and
a burn scar on his ankle that he said were from the attack. He and the
authorities at the prison in Iraqi Kurdistan where Human Rights Watch
interviewed him said he had undergone five rounds of surgery for the
wounds.
Only 30 to 40 Survivors
Only about 30 to 40 prisoners survived the shooting, the witnesses said.
They included three Yezidis and one Christian, according to survivor
S.E.
The survivors described seeing prisoners die hours later from their
wounds because they were too weak to escape. “The sun was so hot,” said
M.A. “Those who didn’t die from the shooting or the fire, they died from
thirst.”
The survivors gave harrowing accounts of their escapes, with some saying
ISIS gunmen chased them in cars through the desert. F.S. said the
prisoners drank urine to stay alive:
I took a few steps and fell to the ground because I was losing too
much blood. I was with a group of 11 survivors. One was not shot and he
helped me walk. We sat under a bridge. The man who helped me, he put his
urine in a bottle. We all drank the urine. Otherwise we would have died
of thirst.
Some survivors said local Sunnis risked their own lives to help them
flee. Eventually, all of the survivors surrendered to or were captured
by Kurdish security forces.
Sunnis Driven to Second Desert Spot
One group of fighters drove the several hundred Badoush prisoners who
claimed to be Sunni, as well as a small number of Christians, to a
second desert location, one Sunni who was among them told Human Rights
Watch. The new location was about a four-hour drive from Badoush, he
said. “We were trembling and afraid,” said the witness, who asked not to
be identified. Four prisoners, including an elderly man, died from
thirst and the heat during the drive, he said.
The witness said ISIS forces kept the men in a cluster of mud houses.
Aided by Sunni prisoners, he said, the ISIS captors separated out those
they believed to be Shia posing as Sunnis and took them away at sunset.
He said he and the other captives did not see the Shia men again and
feared the ISIS fighters had killed them.
The witness said he did not know the location of the mud houses, as some
in the group thought ISIS had taken them to Iraq’s Anbar province, west
of Baghdad, and others thought they might have been in Syria. After
three days, the fighters again loaded the Sunnis and Christians onto
trucks and drove them for three hours back to Mosul, where they released
them, he said.
Two other prisoners told Human Rights Watch they had heard similar
accounts from two other Sunni inmates from Badoush Prison who were
detained with them in Iraqi Kurdistan after ISIS released them. Those
two Sunni prisoners declined interview requests.
Reprinted with permission from Human Rights Watch.
