On 13 October 2014, Mohamad Janabi, a 60-year-old resident of Latifiya, was at home with his family when a group of security officers from both the Baghdad Operations Command and the 17^th Division of the Iraqi army, both key forces in the current fight against the Islamic State (IS), arrived in four Chevrolet Silverado pickup trucks, broke into his house and arrested him with his son Najim, a 25-year-old taxi driver, his uncle Ahmad and his cousin Mehdi, a manager in the electricity public company. After seizing the victim’s personal phones and laptops, they dragged them into Mehdi’s car and brought them away. Since then, their family has not received any information on their fate and whereabouts.

Before leaving, the security officers even threatened Mohamad’s mother that they would “kill her” if she “tried to follow them”. The family therefore never submitted an official complaint for the arrest of their relatives.

Alkarama and Al Wissam Humanitarian Assembly thus brought those cases of enforced disappearance to the attention of international mechanisms for the protection of human rights and demanded the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) to raise the cases of Mohamad, Najim, Ahmad and Mehdi Janabi with the Iraqi authorities to call upon them to release them immediately or, at the very least, to disclose their whereabouts and allow their family to visit them without restrictions.

Concerned over the widespread practice of enforced disappearance in Iraq, Alkarama recalls that the Iraqi authorities urgently implement the recommendations issued by the CED in September 2015, and in particular that they:

• Incorporate enforced disappearance into domestic law as an autonomous offence, in line with the definition contained in Article 2 ICCPED;
• Ensure that all persons who were forcibly disappeared and whose fate is not yet known are searched for and located without delay.

For more information or an interview, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Dir: +41 22 734 1008).