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Karar Nushi, a male model and student at the Institute of Fine Art in central Baghdad who was murdered in early July, is seen in a picture uploaded July 7, 2017. (photo byFacebook/derechos)

Author:Hassan al-Shanoun Posted July 25, 2017

BAGHDAD The recent and widely publicized murder of Iraqi model and actor Karar Nushiis only one of the horrific crimesfrequently witnessed in Iraqi society as religious extremists call for exterminating whatever they find offensive.

Ahmad al-Iraqi, one of Nushis close friends, told Al-Monitor hebelieves Nushi was killed July 3 over his appearance. Iraqi blames the extremist religious militias and groups and their inflammatory speeches through religious platforms.Nushiwas a student at the Institute of Fine Art in central Baghdad and participated in several plays in the city. He was known for his long, blond hair and fashionable, often tightclothing.

He stayed two days away from home. We thought that he had been working on a theatrical project, but his family was shocked by a call from the forensic medicine department to pick up the body, Iraqi said.Nushis murder was a shock to everyone who knew him. He did not have any problem with anyone. He was calm and friendly with everyone."

Nushiwas reportedly torturedand stabbed; hisbody was thrown in a landfill. His murder stirred angry reactionson the Iraqi street. Some bloggers posted on social media videos of clerics inciting the killing of what they called effeminate men.

Nushis story is one of many similar incidents, as criminals walk the streets with impunityin what has become a widespread phenomenon in Iraq, especially as security forces have beenbusy fighting the Islamic State (IS).

On March 20, Lulu a pseudonym received death threats over the phone from anonymous callers. Lulu isgay. In Iraq, gay menare degradingly referred to as tante," which is French for "auntie."

Lulu fled from Baghdad to Erbiland then all the way to Beirut to escape what he believed wasinevitable death. He told Al-Monitor by phone that there are people inciting hate crimes, especially against gays, a phenomenon that has only grown worse in the absence of security and human rights organizations.

Gangs and killers have found a safe haven in Iraqto commit their crimes,and threatening or killing members of the LGBT(lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual community)is not new.

At thebeginning of 2008, gay men in Iraq were torturedat the hands of some armed groupswho used glue to seal mens rectums.

A member of the parliamentary Defense Committee, Abdul Aziz Hassan, said outlawswho exploit the preoccupation of the Iraqi military units in the war against terror have intimidated citizens and imposed their power and control over society through the threat of weapons.However, even with the gradual defeat of ISin Iraq, the violence and militancy against people with different viewsis not likely to end, given the power of several militias upholding religious agendas in different parts of Iraq.

Hassan told Al-Monitor that thegovernment won't be able tocontrol such atrocities unless all weapons are limited to the state only.

Heunderscoredthe need to fight extremist ideology and prosecute religious extremists whoincitehatred.

Iraq is a multi-ethnic and religious country. Calls [for hatred] contribute to widening the gap between the different components of society, Hassan said. "These crimes are aimed also at intimidation, and someare linked to terrorist actsdesigned to gather money or stir sectarian strife.

The first public reaction to Nushis death and the brutal practices used by some radicalscame when a group of intellectuals held a sit-in in central Baghdad, calling on authorities to investigate the crime and capture the killers.

Many people believe crimes in Iraq are committed at the hands of regressive forces seeking to suppress public freedoms through intimidation. Parliament memberShuruq al-Abayjicalled Nushis killing a horrific murder aimed at killing the pure spirit of Iraq." He said, "The perpetrators are trying to deliver a message to society that there is no room for public and private freedoms.

Abayji told Al-Monitor, The peoples reaction will be massive against this crime, and [they] will denounce any other crime suppressing freedoms.

Abayji also accused extremist religious authorities [of] seeking to spread the culture of killing in the community. He calledon the government and its security services to restrict those who use religion as a cover for their criminal actions and who impose de facto authority on Iraqis.

According to a report by the British Observer newspaper, an organization known as the LGBT group in Iraq,headed by London-based activist Ali Bin Ali, saidin 2009that 680 gay people in the country had been killed between 2004 and 2009, 130 of them at the hands of an extremist religious group luring gays online and through chat rooms.

Read More: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/07/karar-nushi-lgbt-iraq-human-rights-extreme-militias.html

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Appearances get people killed in Iraq - Al-Monitor

The Mosul offensive has come to an end. The Islamic State has been militarily defeated and its remnants destroyed within the city.

This is a victory for the state of Iraq. A new nation, remade after the evil of Ba'athism was removed from power, it has faced down a grave threat, and given much in a struggle against an existential enemy of the free world.

But this victory has been marred and will continue to be diminished by worrying reports reaching outsiders from Mosul.

Journalists are beginning to pick up on troubling stories, stories amplified by social media of sectarian crimes being committed by victorious Iraqi forces after recapturing the last stretches of Mosul from ISIS.

This is an entirely negative development both in purely moral, humanitarian terms, and also tactically.

A thinking being cannot but be repelled by footage purporting to show Iraqi forces throwing people off cliffs, or executing people in the street, without trial or deliberation.

Whether these videos are exactly as they seem is almost immaterial. In this case, perception is all that matters. Though some in the West gloat at these pictures, taking it as read that all who suffer in them are ISIS and therefore deserving, this outcome is a tragedy for Iraq.

The international coalition planned the Mosul offensive cleverly and orchestrated it deliberately. It was not meant to turn out like this.

The whole point of taking Mosul using Iraqi state forces alone, rather than ethnic or religiously sectarian militias, was to avoid population-cleansing afterwards. The ambition was to build an image of unity.

The crimes of Iranian-supported and -organised Shiite militias are legendary, not least because the horror of these stories grow and mutate in the imagination. Practical examples abound: worried Sunnis can point to the desecration of corpses by men such as Abu Azrael, a celebrated Shiite jihadist and militiaman.

They can look to what happened in Ramadi, where much of the city was destroyed by sectarian militias, and see, fearfully, a reflection of a possible future.

The real tragedy of all this is that the recapture of Mosul is or should be an unambiguous triumph for Iraq. It is a new nation and has rebounded from defeat in 2014. In retaking Mosul, its soldiers have paid a heavy price for an offensive the whole world was rooting for.

Iraq has improved its tactics. It has managed to minimize overt Iranian influence on the latter stages of this offensive. In doing so, Iraqi forces bore the brunt of the fighting and some elite units, such as the Special Operations Forces (popularly known as the Golden Division), have taken notably high casualties.

But all of this risks being sabotaged by trigger-happy soldiers taking revenge on suspected ISIS remnants in Mosul. Many of those killed cannot be ISIS; they were instead trapped in the areas where militants fought to their last.

Those civilians are just as much victims of ISIS as any other inhabitants of Mosul, but their presence in is taken for complicity. This in an offensive which has featured conclusive evidence of Islamic State fighters using civilians as human shields.

Some of the reports have been truly awful; and the videos purporting to show torture and executions are already floating around on social media.

Such indiscriminate reprisals are sure to fuel Sunni fears and possibly lay the groundwork for long-term problems.

If an ISIS-like organisation either survives this current conflict or becomes a standard to which disaffected Sunnis to flock, the Iraqi state and its international allies will have failed.

Mosul was a battlefront and a warzone. Its buildings and streets have taken a battering, as has its population. They now need help rebuilding, and Iraqi authorities must receive assistance, moral and financial, strategic and tactical, to begin doing so.

But the new Iraq's military triumph in Mosul is already being undermined, both internally, by dissolute elements in its armed forces, and externally, by those who have decided that defeating ISIS in Mosul is not a victory worth the name.

This cannot be allowed to continue. Iraq's victory is being undermined and traduced, and this is a real worry for anyone who cares about future of the country and its people.

James Snell is a British journalist who has written for numerous international publications. He can be found on Twitter at @James_P_Snell.

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Iraq's great victory in Mosul is being undermined - Washington Examiner

A teenage German girl who ran away after converting to Islam and was found by Iraqi troops in Mosul says she wants to go home, a German newspaper and broadcaster reported Monday.

"I just want to go back home to my family," 16-year-old Linda Wenzel said. "I want to get away from the war, away from all the weapons, away from the noise."

German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and public broadcaster ARD said their reporter interviewed the girl in Baghdad after she was found earlier this month as Iraqi forces liberated the northern city of Mosul from the Islamic State group. She could theoretically face the death penalty in Iraq for membership in IS, according to the country's counter-terrorism law.

Wenzel ran away from her home in the small eastern German town of Pulsnitz last summer, shortly after converting to Islam, according to German security officials. She had been in touch with IS members online and was married to one of the extremist group's fighters after arriving in the group's territory.

Her husband died shortly after the marriage, the German media reported.

The girl said she had been hiding in a basement in Mosul when Iraqi soldiers captured her. She said she is "doing fine" despite a bullet wound in her left leg that she said "is from a helicopter attack."

She is currently in a military hospital ward in Baghdad, according to the report.

It's not clear if Wenzel can return to Germany or if she will be tried as an IS member. However, even if she is sentenced to death in Iraq, she would not be executed before the age of 22.

A spokeswoman for the German Foreign Office, Maria Adebahr, said German Embassy staff visited Wenzel and another German woman on Thursday. While Germany and Iraq didn't have any official extradition agreements, the German government was looking into other ways of cooperation regarding the two German women, Adebahr said.

Photos of a disheveled young woman in the presence of Iraqi soldiers went viral online earlier this month, but there were initially contradicting reports about the girl's identity.

The soldiers initially mistook her for a Yazidi woman, but the teenager told them: "I'm not Yazidi, I'm German."

Wenzel was one of 26 foreigners arrested in Mosul this month, Iraqi officials have said.

The Iraqis found three other women from Germany, with roots in Morocco, Algeria and Chechnya. Iraqi officials said the German-Moroccan woman has a child and both were arrested in Mosul about 10 days ago.

The Chechen-German woman was identified as Fatima by Sueddeutsche Zeitung and ARD. She is sharing a room with Wenzel and has an arm injury, they reported, adding that the woman had told them that her two children were missing after a recent air raid in Mosul.

German paper Bild reported Monday that Linda's father, whose name was only given as Reiner W., learned of his missing daughter's whereabouts on the radio as he was working on the construction of a German highway.

"I had a breakdown where I heard that Linda is alive," Bild quoted the divorced father as saying. "I so much wish that my Linda will come home healthy again. I will always be there for her."

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Report: German runaway found in Iraq wants to go home - ABC News

Iran and Iraq have pledged to join forces against militant fighters and ideology in the region by boosting bilateral defense ties, a move that could present a challenge to U.S. foreign policy goals.

Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan and Iraqi Defense MinisterIrfan al-Hiyali met Sunday in Tehran to sign a military agreement aimed at improving joint efforts to curb the influence of jihadissuch as the Islamic State militant group. ISIS has conducted deadly attacks in both countries and is still being fought by Iraq with support from Iran and the U.S., but the U.S. has become increasingly concerned about Iran's growing foothold in Iraq. Despite the volatile history of the twomajority Shiite-Muslim neighbors and theirdiffering views on Washington, the new deal will reportedly seeIran and Iraq's armed forces work together on a number of strategic levels.

Related: U.S. military must leave Iran's borders and stop calling us terrorists, Revolutionary Guards say

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"Extending cooperation and exchanging experiences in fighting terrorism and extremism, border security, and educational, logistical, technical and military support are among the provisions of this memorandum," Reuters quoted Iran's state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) as reporting.

Two Iraqis take a selfie while stepping on a U.S. flag during a parade marking Al-Quds (Jerusalem) International Day organized by the Popular Mobilization Forces in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, June 23. The Popular Mobilization Forces are the collective label for a number of majority-Shiite Muslim, Iran-backed militias battling the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) alongside U.S.-backed forces in Iraq. Haidar Mohammed Ali/AFP/Getty Images

While the U.S. has yet to offer an official response, Iran's Foreign Ministry reportedly said the following day that Iran's international relations were no one else's business. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Bahram Qasemi confirmed Monday that the military agreement had been signed and maintained that no third country should be involved in Iran and Iraq's relationship, IRNA reported.

Iran and Iraq fought a bitter war in the 1980s, in which the U.S. publicly backed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim Baathist, against the new Islamic revolutionary government of Shiite Muslim cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Musava Khomeini. Privately, the U.S. backed both sides to attain funds to battle leftists in LatinAmerica. After the U.S. ultimately toppled Hussein in 2003, Iran quickly began to build relations with the newly installed Shiite Muslim-led government of Iraq and has contributed the services of its elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp. toward battling ISIS after the militant grouptook over nearly half of Iraq in 2014.

The U.S. has also sent troops and has lent extensive resources to assist the Iraqi military and Iraqi Kurdish forces, both of which have fought alongside Iran-backed, majority-Shiite Muslim militias, known as the Popular Mobilization Forces. The U.S. and Iran accuse each other of attempting to destabilize the region and of funding foreign groups classed as terrorist organizations in order to advance their own respective interests. Relations between the U.S. and Iran have become particularly tense since the election of President Donald Trump, who has pledged increased support for Iraq, but has taken a hard-line stance against Iran by increasing economic sanctions and suggesting a renegotiation of a 2015 nuclear treaty signed between the U.S., Iran and several other nations.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein shake hands December 20, 1983, in Baghdad amid a bloody war between Iran and Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands on both sides. The U.S. publicly supported Hussein against a hostile Iranian revolutionary government but provided arms to Iran in order to fund anti-Communist fighters in Nicaragua and facilitate the release of U.S. prisoners in Lebanon. Getty Images

As ISIS loses the last of its ground in Iraq, Iran has taken the opportunity to court its neighbor. In addition to Sunday's defense agreement, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Jaberi-Ansari and Iraqi Parliament Speaker Salim al-Jabouri also met Sunday in Baghdad, where the secondIran-Iraq Joint Political Committee is due to be held, according to IRNAand Press TV, an affiliate of the semi-official Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting agency.

Iran and the U.S. have also downplayed each other's role in defeating ISIS in its former stronghold of Mosul, Iraq's second city and by far the largest population center the jihadishave ever controlled. The U.S. and Iran are also conducting parallel campaigns against ISIS in neighboring Syria, where their partnered factions have clashed at times.

Read more:
Iran and Iraq Military Unite Against 'Terrorism,' Creating Potential Problems for US - Newsweek

Miami Herald

Fate of 39 Indians missing in Iraq for 3 years still unknown Miami Herald Iraq's foreign minister said Monday he does not know whether 39 Indian workers who were abducted by militants in Iraq three years ago are dead or alive. Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari met with his Indian counterpart, Sushma Swaraj, and other ... No substantial evidence on 39 missing Indians, says IraqEconomic Times Iraq not sure of fate of 39 IndiansThe Hindu On Missing Indians, Congress Preps Privilege Notice Against Sushma SwarajNDTV Firstpost all 90 news articles »

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Fate of 39 Indians missing in Iraq for 3 years still unknown - Miami Herald