Iraq Detains More than 1,000 Children as ISIS Suspects-Reporthttps://t.co/OSIOsXTiQm
— SHAFAQ News (@Shafaqnews) February 18, 2022
Iraqi authorities detained over 1,000 children, some as young as nine years old, last year on national security charges, primarily for suspected links with the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
(ISIS), according to a new United Nations
...the Oyster Bay money pit...
report. Although ISIS attacks have dropped considerably since the group lost most of its territory four years ago, the report finds that the detention of children has significantly increased.
Many of these children were arrested on dubious evidence and tortured into confessions of ISIS involvement.
In late 2018, I interviewed boys detained as ISIS suspects in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Some said they had been recruited to fight with ISIS, while others said that they worked as cooks, drivers, or simply participated in a few days of training. One 17-year-old said he believed he was arrested for working at a restaurant in djinn-infested Mosul
... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
that served ISIS members. A few said that they had no links to ISIS, other family members had. Regardless of the extent of their involvement, they were all charged with terrorism.
The majority of the boys said their interrogators tortured them to secure confessions. They described beatings with plastic pipes, electric cables, or rods, sometimes for hours. Nearly all said they eventually confessed to ISIS association, believing they had no other choice.
International law prohibits the recruitment or use of children by gangs, yet Iraq is treating these children as criminals, even if there is no evidence they participated in
...Portuguese politician and diplomat, ninth Secretary-General of the United Nations. Previously, he was the UN High Commissioner for Refugees between 2005 and 2015. He was the Prime Minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002 and was the Secretary-General of the Socialist Party from 1992 to 2002. He served as President of the Socialist International from 1999 to 2005. In both a 2012 and 2014 poll, the Portuguese public ranked him as the best Prime Minister of the previous 30 years...has called on Iraq to release the children.
Instead of detaining and prosecuting children suspected of ISIS affiliation, Iraq should work with the UN to set up reintegration programs so that these children can rejoin their communities, get back into school, and resume their lives.