MOSUL, Iraq: In 2014, Abdulrahman Saad was taken from his home in Mosul by Daesh fighters, leaving his family in limbo.
They asked Daesh security offices and judges: Where is our husband and father? No answer. When the operation to retake Mosul began, they heard he was being held in the western part of the city, with hundreds of other prisoners. But when the area was liberated, they found no trace of Saad, the 59-year-old owner of a wholesale food store.
“Life without my father is difficult,” says his son, Rami. Without him, the Saads struggle to get by, and his wife pines for her spouse.
In their misery, they have company. Since Mosul was declared liberated in July, residents have submitted more than 3,000 missing-persons reports to Nineveh’s provincial council, according to council member Ali Khoudier. Most of them are men or teenage boys. Some were arrested by Daesh during the group’s extremist rule; others were detained by Iraqi forces on suspicion of extremist ties.
Regardless, Iraqi government bureaucracy, inefficiency and neglect have left thousands of families across Iraq hanging as the country’s leadership celebrates the defeat of Daesh.
In a small garden outside of a Mosul courthouse, dozens wait to hear if investigators have news of their missing relatives. They cling to thick files of papers: identity documents, official forms, glossy family photos and “missing person” advertisements from a local paper. It is unlikely they will hear good news.
“It will be years before these people know what exactly happened to their relatives,” said an investigator, as anxious relatives tapped on the windows behind his desk and hovered at his office door.
The investigator, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Iraqi government doesn’t have enough forensic experts to exhume the dozens of mass graves discovered as territory has been retaken from Daesh. And the country’s judicial system isn’t equipped to efficiently process the thousands of detainees scooped up by security forces.
Some 20,000 people are being held at detention centers across Iraq on suspicion of ties to Daesh, according to a report from Human Rights Watch this month.
In Anbar province, where victory was declared in the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah more than a year ago, more than 2,900 people remain missing, according to Mohammed Karbouli, a member of Iraq’s parliamentary committee on defense and security from Anbar. He said those missing from Anbar are becoming a symbol of the lack of trust between Anbar’s mostly Sunni residents and the Shiite-dominated central government in Baghdad.
When parents don’t know the fate of their children, he warned, “tensions emerge.”
Just south of Mosul, an unthinkable number of Iraqis are believed to be buried in a natural sinkhole that became one of the Daesh group’s most infamous mass graves. Some Iraqi officials estimate as many as 4,000 people were tossed into the cavernous, natural crevasse in the barren desert on the road linking Mosul to Baghdad— some already dead, others still living and buried alive.
Daesh fighters “would bring them and make them get out (of the car) and line up at the edge of the hole,” said Mohammed Younis, a resident of the area, recounting the weeks and months leading up to the fight for Mosul. “They would line them up and then they would execute them. And the bodies would all fall into the hole.”
An AP investigation has found at least 133 mass graves left behind by the defeated extremists, and only a handful have been exhumed. Many of the missing — especially the thousands of Yazidis unaccounted for since Daesh fighters slaughtered and enslaved the minority — may ultimately be buried there. Estimates total between 11,000 and 13,000 bodies in the graves, according to the AP tally.
But not all of the missing were spirited away by Daesh. Some families in and around Mosul say their relatives were taken by unidentified gunmen after IS was defeated.
“It was the middle of the day, 3:30 in the afternoon. A silver pickup truck drove into the village and took my brother,” Elias Ahmed explained as he walked along the dusty main road leading to his home in the sprawling Bijwaniya agricultural village.
Ghazwan Ahmed was taken along with four other young men in August. They have not been seen since.
“The men who took him didn’t even identify themselves, they just said they worked in intelligence,” he explained.
Elias Ahmed spent weeks shuttling between the different headquarters buildings of Iraq’s disparate security services in and around Mosul. The federal police, Sunni tribal paramilitary fighters, local policemen and the Iraqi army all control different sections of Mosul and the surrounding Nineveh countryside. Each group maintains its own records of detentions and arrests.
Ahmed went looking for answers at a court north of Mosul in the small, historically Christian town of Tel Keif, established especially to process those charged with terrorism. Each morning, family members gather outside its gates in hope of tracking down missing relatives.
Inside, judges process close to 100 cases a day. Many trials last no longer than 30 minutes.
Yasser Hafahdy, an attorney from Mosul working at the court, defended the practice of arresting people without informing their families where they would be held or the charges against them. He said the court was overwhelmed by the sheer number of Daesh suspects arrested and could not spare the time or resources to reach out to families.
Since the court opened its doors in March, about a dozen judges have processed more than 15,000 cases. More than 60 percent have been found guilty, Hafahdy estimated.
“What we need is a Judge Dredd, you know, Sylvester Stallone,” Hafahdy said, referring to a 1995 dystopian action film in which a traditional justice system is replaced by armed judges who patrol city streets acting as police, judge, jury and executioner.
At a nearby detention center, hundreds of men sat in cramped rooms, and dozens of women and child detainees shuffled between a windowless room and an open courtyard.
“The Iraqi government was completely unprepared for all the people taken prisoner while fighting Daesh,” said an Iraqi lieutenant colonel overseeing a different detention center just south of Mosul. “Honestly we expected more field executions. But human rights organizations were monitoring the operations, so we began taking people prisoner instead.”
The Iraqi officer, who spoke on condition that he was only identified by his rank because he was not authorized to talk to journalists, said that during the Mosul operation hundreds of people passed through his detention center on their way to Baghdad for trials. During the height of the fighting, the small rooms used as makeshift cells were packed with prisoners.
“We know that this is a violation of human rights,” he said. The squalid conditions were due to the backlog of cases in Baghdad, he said, and families were unable to track down arrested relatives until the detainees were processed in the capital.
Rami Saad continues to look. The search has taken him to government detention centers and hospitals in and around Mosul and lawyers’ offices in Baghdad. Rami traveled to the Health Ministry’s forensic department in Mosul to look over lists of people confirmed killed by Daesh. If Abdulrahman Saad’s death could be established, at least the wife would receive his pension.
“But we didn’t find my father’s name,” Rami said, and so “we have a glimmer of hope. Perhaps he is still alive.”
Associated Press writers Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Salar Salim in Mosul, Muhanad Al-Saleh in Baghdad and Lori Hinnant in Paris contributed to this report.
Thousands remain missing after Iraq’s victories against Daesh
Thousands remain missing after Iraq’s victories against Daesh
Egyptians held nearly a year over deadly shipwreck are released from Greek jail after case dismissed
Egyptians held nearly a year over deadly shipwreck are released from Greek jail after case dismissed
Eight of the nine were released from a jail outside the southern city of Nafplio on Wednesday evening
NAFPLIO, Greece: A group of Egyptians jailed for nearly a year pending trial for a deadly shipwreck were released from jail Wednesday, a day after a Greek court threw out the case against them on grounds that it had no jurisdiction to try it.
Nine Egyptians had been charged with being part of the crew of the Adriana, a massively overcrowded trawler that capsized and sank near Greece last June with an estimated 700 people on board while sailing from Libya to Italy. Only 104 people survived – all men, mostly from Syria, Egypt and Pakistan — and 82 bodies were recovered.
The nine, who have been in pretrial custody since their rescue last year, had been charged with being members of a migrant smuggling ring and were accused of having caused the shipwreck. They had faced several life sentences if convicted.
But a court in the southern Greek city of Kalamata on Tuesday ruled it had no jurisdiction to try the case, as the shipwreck occurred in international waters, none of those involved had been trying to enter Greece, the ship was not Greek flagged and no Greek citizens were on board.
The Egyptians’ defense team had argued that the nine were not crew members of the ill-fated trawler but had been paying passengers who were mistakenly identified as crew by nine other survivors, and that they were being used as scapegoats by authorities eager to put all the blame for the tragedy on the trawler’s crew.
Eight of the nine were released from a jail outside the southern city of Nafplio on Wednesday evening. They were transferred to a police station in the city, where they were to remain in custody overnight pending further procedures. It was not immediately clear when they would be fully released from custody.
The ninth defendant was to be released from a different jail.
The massive loss of life in the sinking of the Adriana in the early hours of June 14, 2023, renewed pressure on European governments to protect the lives of migrants and asylum seekers trying to reach the continent. The European border protection agency Frontex says illegal border detections at EU frontiers increased for three consecutive years through 2023, reaching the highest level since the 2015-2016 migration crisis, driven largely by arrivals by sea.
The exact circumstances of how the Adriana sank remain unclear. The trawler was sailing in international waters but within Greece’s search and rescue area of operations, and a coast guard patrol boat and passing merchant ships were near the vessel for several hours. Greek authorities have said the trawler’s crew repeatedly refused offers of help, insisting it wanted to continue to Italy.
Several survivors have said the boat capsized after the Greek coast guard attempted to tow it, an accusation Greek authorities have vehemently denied. A Naval Court investigation into the sinking is still underway.
Speaking at the courthouse after the case was dismissed on Tuesday, Dimitris Choulis, one of the lawyers in the defense team for the nine Egyptians, said attention should turn to how the Adriana sank.
“The court today had to be very brave to issue this decision, and to say that these people are not the smugglers,” Choulis said.
The lawyer blamed the tragedy on the Greek coast guard and Europe’s migration policies, and said it was essential to “make sure that nothing like that would happen again.”
From wedding photographer to water queue: Gaza mother mourns lost dream life
- The mother of seven is one of over two million Gazans who struggle to survive in the eighth month of an Israeli siege
- "I'm a wedding photographer. Someone like me should be going out and living well and spending money on their children," Abdulati said
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip: Falasteen Abdulati mourns her vanished good life as a wedding photographer as she wearily queues day after day for scarce drinking water in a rubble-strewn street in south Gaza, fearing for the future of her children.
The mother of seven is one of over two million Gazans who struggle to survive in the eighth month of an Israeli siege and invasion triggered by a cross-border Hamas attack, with food, drinking water, medical care and safe shelter hard to find.
"I'm a wedding photographer. Someone like me should be going out and living well and spending money on their children," Abdulati, 35, said, laboriously filling a few buckets with water from a battered barrel in the city of Khan Younis.
"Our life has (been reduced) to the simplest needs. It is work and exhaustion. Nothing else. The dream that I had as a wedding photographer to open a studio and to get cameras and to make people happy, is lost. My dream is lost."
She continued: "Every morning we wake up at 7 o’clock and of course the first thing we think about is water," she said. "We come here and wait in the long queue, just to fill up four buckets with water. Other than that, our shoulders hurt. There are no men to carry it for us. There is no one but us. Women are the ones working these days."
Israel's assault on the tiny, heavily urbanised coastal enclave has displaced over three-quarters of the 2.3 million Palestinian population and demolished its infrastructure.
"The future of my children that I worked tirelessly for is lost. There are no schools (functioning), no education. There is no more comfort in life," said Abdulati.
"No safety," she added, referring to the threat of shelling or raids that Israel says target Hamas militants holed up in densely-packed residential neighbourhoods.
Abdulati, dressed in a body-length robe and head-covering, said the upheaval of war had turned the lives of Gaza women upside down. "Women are now like men. They work hard just like men. They're no longer comfortable at home."
Her husband is hospitalised with war injuries.
Breathing heavily, she lugged her buckets along a shattered, sand-covered street and up a dingy flight of cement stairs into the family flat. There she heated up the fresh water over a makeshift fire stove in a cluttered, cramped room dark for lack of electricity, watched intently by her young children.
"We are suffering due to a lack of gas because the border crossings are shut," she said, referring to Israel's siege that has severely restricted humanitarian aid shipments into Gaza.
"The water that I filled up must be rationed. I heat it up so I can wash the children, in addition to doing the dishes and washing clothes. The four buckets I can get per day are just not enough. I have to go back again and again."
Poverty in Lebanon tripled over a decade, World Bank says
- The findings showed stark differences in poverty levels between different areas of the country
- Among Lebanese surveyed, the poverty rate in 2022 was 33 percent, while among Syrians it reached 87 percent
BEIRUT: Poverty in Lebanon tripled over the course of a decade during which the small Mediterranean country slid into a protracted financial crisis, the World Bank said Thursday.
The percentage of people in Lebanon living below the poverty line rose from 12 percent in 2012 to 44 percent in 2022, the bank said in a report based on surveys conducted in five of the country’s eight governorates.
The data provided the most detailed snapshot to date on the economic circumstances of the country’s population since the crisis that began in late 2019, although World Bank officials acknowledged it was incomplete as surveyors were not given access to three governates in the south and east of the country.
The findings showed stark differences in poverty levels between different areas of the country and between Lebanese citizens and the country’s large population of Syrian refugees.
In the Beirut governate, in contrast to the rest of the country, poverty actually declined from 4 percent to 2 percent of the population during the decade surveyed, while in the largely neglected Akkar region in the north, the rate increased from 22 percent to 62 percent.
Among Lebanese surveyed, the poverty rate in 2022 was 33 percent, while among Syrians it reached 87 percent. While the survey found an increase in the percentage of Lebanese citizens working in unskilled jobs like agriculture and construction, it found that most Lebanese still work in skilled jobs while the majority of Syrians do unskilled labor.
The report also measured “multidimensional poverty,” which takes into account access to services like electricity and education as well as income, finding that some 73 percent of Lebanese and 100 percent of non-Lebanese residents of the country qualify as poor under this metric.
Beginning in late 2019, Lebanon’s currency collapsed, while inflation skyrocketed and the country’s GDP plummeted. Many Lebanese found that the value of their life savings had evaporated.
Initially, many saw an International Monetary Fund bailout as the only path out of the crisis, but since reaching a preliminary agreement with the IMF in 2022, Lebanese officials have made limited progress on reforms required to clinch the deal, including restructuring the ailing banking sector.
An IMF delegation visiting Beirut this week found that “some progress has been made on monetary and fiscal reforms,” the international financial institution said in a statement, including on “lowering inflation and stabilizing the exchange rate,” but it added that the measures “fall short of what is needed to enable a recovery from the crisis.”
It noted that reforms to “governance, transparency and accountability” remain “limited” and that without an overhaul of the banking sector, the “cash and informal economy will continue to grow, raising significant regulatory and supervisory concerns.”
The World Bank has estimated that the cash economy makes up 46 percent of the country’s GDP, as Lebanese distrustful of banks in the wake of the crisis have sought to deal in hard currency.
The flourishing cash economy has created fertile ground for money laundering and led to concerns that Lebanon could be placed on the Paris-based watchdog Financial Action Task Force’s “grey list” of countries with a high risk of money laundering and terrorism financing.
Two-day Israeli raid on West Bank city leaves 12 Palestinians dead
- Israeli troops withdrew from the city after carrying out raids in the city’s refugee camp and exchanging fire with masked gunmen
- Four children among the dead, and 25 wounded during the fighting
JeNIN: A two-day Israeli raid on the occupied West Bank city of Jenin killed at least 12 Palestinians, health authorities and an AFP correspondent said Thursday.
Israeli troops withdrew from the city early Thursday, the correspondent said, after carrying out raids in the city’s refugee camp and exchanging fire with masked gunmen in a nearby neighborhood in the city center.
The Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah said Israeli forces had killed 12 people including four children, and wounded 25 during the fighting which began on Tuesday morning.
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa and medical charity Doctors Without Borders reported that surgeon Usaeed Jabareen, from Jenin’s Khalil Suleiman government hospital, was among those killed on Tuesday.
An AFP correspondent on Thursday saw five bodies at the hospital morgue, including Jabareen’s.
A schoolteacher and a student were also among the dead, Wafa reported, quoting hospital director Wissam Bakr.
Several of the bodies were draped in flags and carried among crowds of Palestinians, including armed militants, through the streets as gunfire rang out.
Both Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Palestinian militant group Hamas condemned the raid.
Israel’s army said on Wednesday troops had “exchanged fire with armed men and killed a number of terrorists, including two terrorists who threw explosives at the forces.”
The army said it had raided the house of Ahmed Barakat, who was suspected of involvement in an attack on an Israeli civilian last year.
Meir Tamari, 32, was killed in May 2023 at the entrance to a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, medics and military officials said at the time.
Jenin has long been a stronghold of Palestinian militant groups, and the Israeli army routinely carries out raids in the city and adjacent camp.
The West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, has seen a surge in violence for more than a year, but especially so since the Israel-Hamas war erupted on October 7.
At least 518 Palestinians have been killed in the territory by Israeli troops or settlers since the Gaza war broke out, according to Palestinian officials.
Attacks by Palestinians have killed at least 12 Israelis in the West Bank over the same period, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
The Gaza Strip has been gripped by more than seven months of war since Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 35,709 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Lebanese children narrowly escape deadly strike on Hezbollah fighter
- The injured children were hospitalized with cuts from flying glass after the aerial attack
- “At first, we didn’t understand what was happening, and there was panic among the children,” said Ahmad Qubaisi who was driving the bus
NABATIEH, Lebanon: Lebanese school children on a minibus had a narrow escape Thursday when a drone strike killed a Hezbollah fighter in the car ahead, blowing out the windscreen of their vehicle and wounding three pupils.
The injured children were hospitalized with cuts from flying glass after the aerial attack, which state media and a source close to the Iran-backed militant group blamed on Israel.
“At first, we didn’t understand what was happening, and there was panic among the children,” said Ahmad Qubaisi, 57, who was driving the bus with 18 children on board.
“Suddenly a strike hit the car in front of us” near the town of Nabatiyeh, about 13 kilometers (eight miles) from the Israeli border, he said.
“The bus’s windshield shattered... I backed up and that’s when the second strike hit the car” in front of him, Qubaisi added.
The source close to Hezbollah told AFP that Israel was behind the strike, which killed a Hezbollah member who was named as Mohammad Ali Nasser Farran.
The attack was the latest in months of violence that has upended lives on both sides of the Lebanon-Israel frontier as the Israel-Hamas war has raged in Gaza.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah, an ally of Palestinian militant group Hamas, has traded near daily cross-border fire with Israel since the October 7 attack on southern Israel.
In the more than seven months since then, at least 429 people have been killed in Lebanon, mostly militants but also including 82 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
Israel says 14 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed on its side of the border.
Despite the fatalities, both sides have so far calibrated the intensity and range of their strikes in efforts to avoid an all-out war between the two countries.
At the site of Thursday’s strike, an AFP photographer saw the charred car and blood stains on the road.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported “an enemy drone attack in the morning on the Kfardjal-Nabatiyeh road.”
The attack “killed a car driver” and “wounded three pupils” who were in a bus heading to school, it said.
One of the children, 11-year-old Mohammed Nasser, was lying on a bed in the Nabatiyeh government hospital, a bandage on his bruised forehead.
“The glass shattered... and the car in front of us was burning,” the boy recalled.
Fearing more strikes, he said, “we put our schoolbags on our heads.”
Standing beside him, his aunt showed AFP his blood-stained school uniform.
The boy’s father, Ali Nasser, said that “I was working in my field when my brother-in-law called telling me my son had been injured.”
“Fortunately, his injuries are not serious,” he added.
A Nabatiyeh school later said that the man killed, Farran, was also a physics teacher at the school and that it mourned his death.
Later Thursday, Hezbollah said it had launched dozens of rockets at a base in northern Israel.
It said its katyusha barrage was “in response to the assassination carried out by the enemy in Kafardjal, and the injuring and terrorizing of children.”
