The civil administration and organizations of Shingal in Mosul stop the process of moving remnants of Ezidis in a mass grave flattened by Iraqi intelligence to be held in plastic bags into morgue.
On June 29th, a unit of Iraqi intelligence based in Shingal, 120 km west of Mosul, has leveled the plot of land next to its headquarter where a mass grave of Ezidis is documented by a civil society organization for documentation of the atrocities of the Ezidis.
The site is located between Shingal police and Iraqi intelligence office in the district of Shingal, home to the Ezidi ethno-religious minority in Mosul center of Ninewa province.
The Iraqi intelligence are planning to use the plot of land next to their office as a car park for which they flatten the ground but later the locals protest the step taken without any consultancy since the site has been documented as a mass grave for 6-10 remnains of Ezidis slaughtered at the hands of Islamic State ISIS militants back in 2014 and 2015.
A relevant source anonymously told KirkukNow “four days ago, the intelligence in cooperation with civil defense put the remains illegally and without permission into couple of plastic bags at the back of a truck to be taken into Mosul morgue.
the intelligence in cooperation with civil defense put the remains illegally without permission into couple of plastic bags … to be taken into Mosul morgue
“The admins of the NGO were informed and immediately went to the site and stopped it saying this is unacceptable,” the source added. “The crops were returned back to its place.”
The Ezidi Organization for documentation of Shingal documents has registered the site as a mass grave on August 29, 2019. The NGO said in a statement then it has found a mass grave for up to ten people in cooperation with Shingal police.
Shingal, on the border of Iraq-Syria, is home to the Ezidi minority targeted by Islamic State (IS) group in August 2014 and one of the disputed territories between Baghdad and Erbil.
Seized in August 2014 by ISIS militants whom accused the Ezidis of being “heretics,” Shingal has been the scene of tragedy: a genocidal campaign of killings, rape, abductions and enslavement, mounted to genocide.
The surviving community fled to safer-heaven IDP camps on Shingal Mount and in the adjacent northern Kurdistan region where tens of thousands still live in tens of camps for Internally Displaced Person IDP.
Thousands of Ezidi women, girls and kids were enslaved and taken as sex slaves. Up today, about 2800 Ezidis, mainly women, girls and kids, are still missing.
Natiq Alo Hamed, spokesperson of Shingal police said they are following the case. “Three days ago, Shingal police chief tasked me to check the site and remains were there. We are against moving the remains by them since its illegal and it’s not their duty to unearth mass graves.”
Shingal, August 29th 2019- The site of the mass grave found and documented by the Ezidi Organization for Documentation.
About eighty mass graves and tens of individual graves were found for the Ezidi adherents slaughtered at the hands of the extremist of ISIS yet few of it has been exhumed up today.
Fahad Hamid, appointed as mayor by Shingal autonomous administration, close to Kurdistan Workers Party PKK, said the Iraqi intelligence are in a hurry to turn the site into a car park.
“I have visited Shingal intelligence and talked to them. They insist to expand their office and will handle the issue of the remnants.”
KirkukNow could not contact Iraqi intelligence in Shingal to comment on the issue.
Hamid, who is not recognized as Shingal mayor by Iraqi government, said “this government body is about to create problems for Ezidis and the people of Shingal. They are supposed to be deployed out of town not at the center.”
This government body is about to create problems for Ezidis and the people of Shingal
Earlier, Falah Hassan, member of the investigative and data collection committee of national team for exhuming mass graves under the Kurdistan Regional Government KRG, was doubtful if the remains found at the site were for humans.
He said they have contacted Baghdad and once they are assigned, they check the site for further investigations.
Sources anonymously told Kirkuk Now that only Mosul Morgue as a state body has followed up the case of the levelled mass grave on the ground.
On March 15, 2019, the first mass grave for the Eizidi victims was unearthed in the village of Kojo where 364 bodies were collected from 17 mass graves, official records of Iraqi national team for mass graves said.
