Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi should form a swift inquiry commission to investigate the bodies found in Babylon governorate, southern Iraq, the Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights said on Thursday.
"These bodies raise suspicions about war crimes or genocide by terrorist groups in the areas south of Baghdad. The statements of politicians and local officials who are trying to procrastinate and simplify the case cannot be relied on," the observatory said.
The Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights said, "How did Speaker of the House of Representatives Mohammed al-Halbousi know that these bodies belong to sporadic incidents, did any investigation have done so, does he have advance information? Al-Halbousi should activate the supervisory effort of the Parliament to reach the truth.
A few days ago, government documents from local authorities in Babylon governorate revealed that 31 bodies had been handed over to a charity organization for burial in the southern Iraqi governorate of Karbala, describing them as “anonymous” bodies.
The corpses were found between 2016 and 2019, but information has been circulated that the total number of bodies found is 250. The government's silence over the incident indicates the involvement of those close to the Iraqi government.
A document issued in August 2019 from the municipality's directorate of Hilla (the local capital of Babylon) directed to the Babylon Health/ Forensic Medicine Department shows its agreement to hand over the bodies to a charity organization called the Fatima al-Zahra Foundation, which according to the book has its cemetery.
"How can scores of bodies be handed over to a charitable organization? What is the mechanism by which government institutions should deal with civil society organizations, and does the state lack the effort to bury these bodies?" Said the Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights.
The Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights said: "We believe that this incident has been covered up by the media without any investigation, everything indicates this, especially when it was handed over to a civil society organization without announcing the presence of bodies for DNA testing."
The Observatory also said, "We are surprised by the silence of Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi about this incident and the lack of any measures that help the victims' families to reach the bodies of their relatives".
The director of the Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights Mustafa Saadoon said that "the silence of the Iraqi government is hiding the truth and demonstrates that the executive authorities have information about these bodies, but they do not want to disclose them".
"While we seek and hope that the Iraqi government will expose the fate of those who are forcibly disappeared and hold perpetrators of human rights abuses accountable, the government is playing the role of aiding in the absence of facts and helping perpetrators to go further in their abuses," Saadoun said.
The Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights said that "Iraqi politicians played on the intimidation of people by demanding to reveal the identities of the victims and the perpetrators on the pretext that it played on the sectarian tendency, but we see that this policy of intimidation is intended to prevent people from claiming their rights and access to the truth".
The Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights calls on Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi to take swift and urgent action to find out why these victims were killed and why their killings were concentrated within the geographical boundaries of one governorate.
