BAGHDAD: Iraqi paramilitary forces announced Saturday that they had discovered a mass grave at Badush prison near Mosul containing the remains of hundreds of people executed by the IS group. Iraqi forces have found dozens of mass graves containing hundreds of bodies as they pushed IS back in more than two years of heavy fighting, during the operation to retake Mosul. IS reportedly killed up to 600 people after seizing Badush in 2014, and was also said to have held hundreds of kidnapped women from Iraq’s Yazidi minority at the facility.
The Iraqi military said that forces from the Hashed al Shaabi — an umbrella group of pro-government forces that are dominated by militias — were among the units that recaptured the prison from the IS.
Hashed forces found “a large mass grave containing the remains of around 500 civilian prisoners in (Badush) prison who were executed by (IS) gangs after they controlled the prison during their occupation of Mosul,” the military said.
The Hashed did not say how they reached that figure, which could not be independently confirmed, but it is in keeping with accounts of IS killing hundreds of inmates from Badush.
According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), IS gunmen executed up to 600 inmates from the prison on June 10, 2014, forcing them to kneel along a nearby ravine and then shooting them with assault rifles, an account also contained in a United Nations report.
IS abuses at the jail did not end with executing its inmates. Iraqi lawmaker Vian Dakhil said in 2014 that the IS were holding more than 500 Yazidi women at Badush. The Badush site is not the first mass grave to be found during the Mosul campaign, in which Iraqi forces recaptured areas around the country’s second city before battling IS inside it. Iraqi forces found one in the Hamam al Alil area south of Mosul in November that an official said appeared to hold the remains of at least 25 bodies. — AFP
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