Two women staff members employed by Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, who is on the run from Iraqi authorities, were detained by security forces. Their whereabouts and status are currently unknown, rights group Amnesty International said on Monday.
“Iraqi authorities must immediately disclose the whereabouts of Rasha al-Hussain and Bassima Kiryakos,” the two women, Amnesty regional director Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui said in a statement. “At the very minimum they should have immediate access to their family and a lawyer.”
The women were detained by security forces on the first of the year. Both women work for al-Hashemi’s media office.
“The circumstances of their arrest and their incommunicado detention when we know that torture is rife in Iraq can only raise the greatest fears for their safety,” Sahraoui added. Amnesty said security forces arrested the two women without arrest warrants and did not inform their families.
Iraqi authorities, Sahraoui said, need “to provide convincing evidence that the two women have committed a crime,” and if not, they need to be released instead.
Hashemi is accused of running a “death squad,” as it often reported by state media, that targeted government and security officials in Iraq. The government said that several of his bodyguards have been linked to killings, which they trace back to Hashemi.
The vice-president is said to be hiding in the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, which lies on the border between Iraq and Turkey, and has its own security forces.
“In the last few years, hundreds of detainees have been shown on the Al-Iraqiyqa channel making ‘confessions’ admitting responsibility for various terrorism related offenses,” Amnesty said. “These confessions have invariably been extracted under torture and other ill-treatment. Many people were convicted by the Central Criminal Court of Iraq on the basis of these confessions.”
