Daily Times

Every Friday since Mosul was prised from the Islamic State group’s clutches last July, women gather in the Iraqi city’s Al-Minassa Square, desperate to learn the fate of husbands and sons.

Dressed in black, with children in tow and brandishing photos, some fear their men have fallen victim to a cruel double jeopardy.

They had been imprisoned by or forced to work for IS, only for Iraqi forces to suspect them of collaborating voluntarily with the jihadists — and lock them up.

That is what some mothers and wives fear, faced with official silence.

“Instead of being free today and compensated, they are being kept behind bars,” said 80-year-old Umm Abdullah, tormented by her son’s disappearance.

She fears her child will be falsely accused, 12 months since Iraqi forces expelled IS.

When the jihadists seized Mosul in 2014 after a lightning offensive, men working in the security forces or in other state jobs who did not run away were left with nowhere to hide.

Seen as representatives of an “apostate” state, many of them were forced to publicly repent and swear allegiance to IS.

The women of Al-Minassa resemble the Mothers of the ‘Plaza de Mayo’ who relentlessly pursued justice for sons who vanished under Argentina’s 1976 to 1983 junta.

‘Sure they are detained’

Standing on the steps of the square, 38-year-old housewife Shaima believes she knows what happened to her policeman husband. Shaima, 38, said jihadists raided the family home and abducted her husband on November 25, 2016, a fate that befell many of his colleagues. When Iraqi troops battled to retake the city, “he was used with other prisoners as human shields”, she said.

Soldiers then arrested him “because he didn’t have identity papers and had grown a thick beard during his detention by IS”, said the mother of six, fighting back tears.

Published in Daily Times, June 14^th 2018.