ISIS's success in Mosul could have something to do with the Iraqi government putting a general accused of carrying out systematic torture in charge of the city's security. The top Iraqi officer in Mosul, whose forces fled with hardly a fight as ISIS militants and their allies took over Iraq's second-largest city, is an accused torturer who was once targeted by the U.S. military and the Iraqi criminal justice system.American and Iraqi lawyers and investigators, built a strong case against Mahdi. The unit compiled dozens of witness statements about his participation in the systematic torture of detainees along sectarian lines at the height of the violence between Sunni and Shia factions in Iraq in 2005 and 2006. This investigation augmented a previous Iraqi warrant from 2006. Twenty brave witnesses delivered statements that he ordered the systematic torture of detainees and often supervised it himself.
From 2006 to 2008, U.S. military lawyers and commanders pressed Maliki to support sending Al Gharawi to trial, to prove he was serious about weeding out sectarianism in the ranks of his security forces. Those efforts failed. A 2006 diplomatic cable released by wikileaks shows then-U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilizad explaining Maliki's intransigence. "Mahdi is alleged to have committed gross human rights violations and extra-judicial killings during his service as the National Police's Second Division Commander at the detention facility known as Site 4. Mahdi has proven valuable enough to Maliki, however, that he rebuffed our request that he execute an Iraqi warrant for Mahdi's arrest."
By all indications, the general was operating [in Nineveh and Mosul] exactly as he had in South Baghdad in 2005 and 2006, abusing, torturing and alienating the population.