BAGHDAD, March 22: Iraq has detained or imprisoned at least 19,000 people accused of connections to the Islamic State group or other terror-related offenses, and sentenced more than 3,000 of them to death, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.

The mass incarceration and speed of guilty verdicts raise concerns over potential miscarriages of justice — and worries that jailed militants are recruiting within the general prison population to build new extremist networks.

The AP count is based partially on an analysis of a spreadsheet listing all 27,849 people imprisoned in Iraq as of late January, provided by an official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Thousands more also are believed to be held in detention by other bodies, including the Federal Police, military intelligence and Kurdish forces. Those exact figures could not be immediately obtained.

The AP determined that 8,861 of the prisoners listed in the spreadsheet were convicted of terrorism-related charges since the beginning of 2013 — arrests overwhelmingly likely to be linked to the Islamic State group, according to an intelligence figure in Baghdad.

In addition, another 11,000 people currently are being detained by the intelligence branch of the Interior Ministry, undergoing interrogation or awaiting trial, a second intelligence official said. Both intelligence officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the press.

“There’s been great overcrowding … Iraq needs a large number of investigators and judges to resolve this issue,” Fadhel al-Gharwari, a member of Iraqi’s parliament-appointed human rights commission, told the AP.

Al-Gharwari said many legal proceedings have been delayed because the country lacks the resources to respond to the spike in incarcerations.

Large numbers of Iraqis were detained during the 2000s, when the U.S. and Iraqi governments were battling Sunni militants, including al-Qaida, and Shiite militias. In 2007, at the height of the fighting, the U.S. military held 25,000 detainees. The spreadsheet obtained by the AP showed that about 6,000 people arrested on terror charges before 2013 still are serving those sentences.

But the current wave of detentions has hit the Iraqi justice system much harder because past arrests were spread out over a much longer period and the largest numbers of detainees were held by the American military, with only a portion sent to Iraqi courts and the rest released.

Human Rights Watch warned in November that the broad use of terrorism laws meant those with minimal connections to the Islamic State group are caught up in prosecutions alongside those behind the worst abuses. The group estimated a similar number of detainees and prisoners — about 20,000 in all.

“Based on all my meetings with senior government officials, I get the sense that no one — perhaps not even the prime minster himself — knows the full number of detainees,” said Belkis Wille, the organization’s senior Iraq researcher.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who is running to retain his position in national elections slated for May, has repeatedly called for accelerated death sentences for those charged with terrorism.

The spreadsheet analyzed by the AP showed that 3,130 prisoners have been sentenced to death on terrorism charges since 2013.

Since 2014, about 250 executions of convicted IS members have been carried out, according to the Baghdad-based intelligence official. About 100 of those took place last year, a sign of the accelerating pace of hangings.

The United Nations has warned that fast-tracking executions puts innocent people at greater risk of being convicted and executed, “resulting in gross, irreversible miscarriages of justice.”

The rising number of those detained and imprisoned reflects the more than four-year fight against the Islamic State group, which first formed in 2013 and conquered nearly a third of Iraq and neighboring Syria the next year.

Iraqi and Kurdish forces, backed by a U.S.-led coalition, eventually rolled the group back on both sides of the border, regaining nearly all of the territory by the end of last year.

Throughout the fighting, Iraq has pushed thousands of IS suspects through trials in counterterrorism courts. Trials witnessed by the AP and human rights groups often took no longer than 30 minutes.

The vast majority were convicted under Iraq’s Terrorism Law, which has been criticized as overly broad.

Asked about the process, Saad al-Hadithi, a government spokesman, said, “The government is intent that every criminal and terrorist receive just punishment.”

The largest concentration of those with IS-related convictions is in Nasiriyah Central Prison, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) southeast of Baghdad, a sprawling maximum-security complex housing more than 6,000 people accused of terrorism-related offenses.

Cells designed to hold two prisoners now hold six, according to a prison official who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. The official said overcrowding makes it difficult to segregate prisoners charged with terrorism and that an inadequate number of guards means IS members are openly promoting their ideology inside the prison.

Though prisoners at Nasiriyah were banned last year from giving sermons and recruiting fellow inmates, the official said he still witnesses prisoners circulating extremist religious teachings.

In wards holding mostly terror-related convicts, high-ranking IS members have banned prisoners from watching television. Many refuse to eat meat from the cafeteria, believing it hasn’t been prepared according to religious guidelines, the prison official said.

The relative free rein for extremists is reminiscent of Bucca Prison, a now-closed facility that the U.S. military ran in southern Iraq in the 2000s.

The facility proved a petri dish where militant detainees mingled — including the man who now leads the Islamic State group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who spent months there, joining with other militants who became prominent in the group.

Iraqi officials say they have taken steps to prevent a repeat of the Bucca phenomenon.

“We will never allow Bucca to happen again,” said an Interior Ministry officer overseeing the detention of IS suspects in the Mosul area, also speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

“The Americans freed their captives; under Iraq, they will all receive the death penalty,” he said.

Cellphone signal jammers are installed at prisons holding IS suspects. But in Nasiriyah, the prison official said inmates appear to remain in contact with the outside.

He recounted how just days after a guard disciplined a senior IS member in the prison, the man threatened the guard’s family, listing the names and ages of his children.

The imprisonments hit hard among Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority, threatening to worsen tensions with the Shiite-dominated government. The community was both the pool that IS drew recruits from and the population most brutally victimized by its rule.

Mass incarcerations under former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki led to widespread resentment among Sunnis, helping fuel the growth of IS.

The head of the International Red Cross, an organization that regularly visits prison and detention facilities in Iraq, warned that mass detentions often incite future cycles of violence.

“It’s the tortures, the ill treatments, the continuous long-term bad conditions in detentions which have radicalized a lot of actors which we find again as armed actors on the battlefield,” ICRC President Peter Maurer said during a recent visit to Iraq. AP

MOSUL, July 19: For one Iraqi lieutenant, the fight against the Islamic State group in Mosul has been a slow, methodical quest for revenge. For three years, he has hunted for two IS militants from his village who he believes killed his father. Along the way, he has shot to death detained militants after interrogating them, he acknowledges unapologetically.

And if he catches either of the men he is searching for, the lieutenant vows he will inflict on him “a slow death” and hang his body from a post in the village after forcing him to reveal where his father’s body is buried.

That sort of thirst for vengeance in the wake of military victories is fueling extrajudicial killings of suspected IS members at the hands of Iraqi security forces in and around Mosul. Videos that emerged last week showed troops in Mosul taking captured IS suspects and throwing them one by one off a high wall next to the Tigris River, then shooting their bodies below.

Speaking to The Associated Press, four Iraqi officers from three different branches of the military and security forces openly admitted that their troops killed unarmed and captured Islamic State suspects, and they defended the practice. They, like the lieutenant, spoke on condition of anonymity because they acknowledged such practices were against international law, but all those interviewed by AP said they believed the fight against IS should be exempt from such rules of war because militant rule in Iraq was so cruel.

However, the killings risk tipping Iraq back into the cycles of violence that have plagued the country for over a decade, according to Belkis Wille, Iraq researcher with Human Rights Watch. The Islamic State group was able to attract recruits in the past because of people’s anger over abuses, including arbitrary detentions, torture and extrajudicial killings, she said.

If abuses continue, “all you’re going to see is (that) young Sunni Arab men are going to want to join whatever the next extremist group looks like,” she said. Despite the military’s vows not to tolerate it, she said no soldier or commander has been held accountable for any killings.

The bloodshed reflects the deeply personal nature of the fight against IS. When the militants overran Mosul and large parts of northern and western Iraq in 2014, they specifically targeted members of the military and security forces and their families for brutal atrocities. Near Tirkrit, IS massacred some 1,700 captured military recruits and buried them in mass graves that have been uncovered since. Hundreds of policemen and soldiers in Mosul are believed to have been killed after the takeover. Militants made no attempt to hide atrocities.

Defense Ministry’s spokesman, Brig. Gen. Tahseen Ibrahim, said that authorities “have not registered any incident of revenge killing, whether carried out by security forces or residents. The situation is under full control and we will not allow such incidents to happen because this issue is very sensitive and leads to violent reactions.”

But a senior Iraqi officer said his troops regularly killed men who were said to be IS among civilians fleeing the city at screening centers in and around Mosul. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the possibility it could prompt legal repercussions.

“When an entire group of civilians tells us, ‘This man is Daesh,’ yes, we shoot him,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.

“When you’re facing a man who has killed your friends, your family, yes, sometimes the men get rough,” he added. “But for us, this is personal.”

The lieutenant said the two men who killed his father were well known in his hometown, a small village south of Mosul. He agreed to share his story with the AP because he wanted to show how personal the fight is for Iraqi troops. Two of his colleagues confirmed his version of events. The AP is not revealing the names of the men he is pursuing because there is no way to confirm independently they belonged to IS.

The lieutenant said his father was an officer in the security forces who fought al-Qaida, the predecessor to IS, in 2007, at the height of Iraq’s sectarian violence. After the Islamic State group seized the village in 2014, the tribes that were once kicked out for al-Qaida ties moved back in, and IS installed them in security and administrative positions.

According to the lieutenant, two men grabbed the lieutenant’s father outside his home. The two were among those previously expelled for al-Qaida ties, he said.

The lieutenant was away, and his neighbors told him his father had been killed and who did it. He said he was told the men boasted about it in public. IS fighters also killed the lieutenant’s uncle and more than a dozen other friends and relatives.

The lieutenant keeps an old picture of the two men on his phone. He said a handful of other troops know about his hunt and have helped him interrogate and kill IS suspects.

As Iraqi forces advanced toward the lieutenant’s village last year in the lead-up to Mosul, he began interrogating captured IS suspects.

“Most of them I just asked questions,” he said, “but for those who I knew had blood on their hands, I killed them on the spot.”

He said he has killed more than 40 militants, whether in combat or in interrogations on the sidelines of the battle. He acknowledged most were not directly responsible for his relatives’ deaths.

“I’m not selfish with my revenge, what I’m doing is for all Iraqis,” he said.

Early on in the Mosul operation, he said he learned that one of the two men was in Tal Afar, a town west of Mosul that remains in IS hands, or had fled to Syria.

In early July, as Iraqi forces pushed into Mosul’s Old City, he received a tip on the location of the second man. He said a colleague, an intelligence officer, called and said he was holding an IS suspect from the lieutenant’s home town.

“I told him don’t do anything, keep him there. I’m on my way,” the lieutenant said.

The detainee was the uncle of the lieutenant’s second target. The man was left alone with the lieutenant in a bare concrete room without a table or chair.

“I didn’t torture him. I cut the plastic handcuffs from his wrists and gave him water,” the lieutenant said. The man was elderly, with a grey beard and hair.

“He begged me not to kill him as I questioned him,” he said, smiling. “He could barely walk (he was so scared).”

Eventually, the man told the lieutenant that his second target was alive and in Mosul’s Old City.

“After I questioned him I sent him to hell,” the lieutenant said flatly. He said he shot the man with his side arm and left his body on the floor.

The first reports of revenge killings appeared within weeks of the launch of the Mosul operation last year and continued throughout. But the government and rights groups do not have an exact number.

In June, Human Rights Watch said at least 26 bodies of blindfolded and handcuffed men had been found in dumped in government-held areas in and around Mosul. A month later, HRW said it had further reports of extrajudicial killings. Wille of Human Rights Watch said it was taking place “basically everywhere that is touched by this conflict” and by every armed force involved in the fight.

The military says troops have orders to hand any captured IS over for interrogation ahead of future trial.

The lieutenant dismissed the idea of going to the courts, saying they are corrupt and suspects could bribe their way to freedom.

“I know some people believe that this kind of killing is wrong, but Daesh, they are not human beings,” he said. “I am the one who still has my humanity.”

When Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared “total victory” in Mosul last week, the lieutenant said he believed his target is still in one of the last IS pockets in the Old City.

“I hope I find him alive,” he said, “because I want to make sure he dies a slow death, not quick. I want him to tell me where my father’s body is buried, and then I want to take his body and hang it from a post in my village.”-AP

MOSUL, July 12: Iraq on Monday declared “total victory” over the Islamic State group in Mosul, retaking full control of the country’s second-largest city three years after it was seized by extremists bent on building a global caliphate.

“This great feast day crowned the victories of the fighters and the Iraqis for the past three years,” said Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, flanked by his senior military leadership at a small base on the edge of the Old City, where the final battles for Mosul unfolded.

Al-Abadi alluded to the brutality of the battle for Mosul — Iraq’s longest yet in the fight against IS — saying the triumph had been achieved “by the blood of our martyrs.”

While Mosul fell to IS in a matter of days in 2014, the campaign to retake the city lasted nearly nine months. The fight, closely backed by airstrikes from the US-led coalition, brought an end to the extremists’ so-called territorial caliphate, but has also left thousands dead, entire neighborhoods in ruins and nearly 900,000 displaced from their homes.

Shortly after al-Abadi’s speech, the coalition congratulated him on the victory but noted that parts of the Old City still “must be back-cleared of explosive devices and possible ISIS fighters in hiding.” ISIS, ISIL and Daesh are alternative acronyms for the Islamic State group.

“The victory in Mosul, a city where ISIS once proclaimed its so-called ‘caliphate,’ signals that its days in Iraq and Syria are numbered,” President Donald Trump said in a statement.

Earlier in the day, airstrikes pounded the last IS-held territory on the western edge of the Tigris, Humvees rushed wounded to field hospitals and soldiers hurriedly filled bags with hand grenades to ferry to the front.

Iraqi troops had slowly pushed through the narrow alleys of the Old City during the past week, punching holes through walls and demolishing houses to carve supply routes and fighting positions in a district where many of the buildings date back centuries.

For days, the remaining few hundred militants held an area measuring less than a square kilometer (less than half a square mile), and Iraqi commanders described victory as imminent.

Al-Abadi also visited Mosul on Sunday, congratulating the troops on recent gains but stopping short of declaring an outright victory as clashes continued.

The drawn-out endgame in Iraq’s fight for Mosul highlighted the resilience of the extremists and the continued reliance of Iraqi forces on air support to retake territory.

Iraqi commanders said gains slowed to a crawl in recent days as IS fighters used their families — including women and children — as human shields. As the battle space constricted, the coalition began approving airstrikes dropping bombs of 200 pounds or more on IS targets within 50 meters (yards) of friendly forces.

Plumes of smoke Monday grew larger than the strip of territory under IS control.

“This used to be a beautiful city, tourists used to come here,” said Iraqi army Capt. Marwan Hadi based inside the Old City. The last days of the fight for Mosul were the fiercest, he said.

“All along the front line, there are so many families under the rubble,” he said. “I saved two children and their mother, but one daughter, we couldn’t reach her.”

Reports of civilian casualties spiked as Iraqi forces punched into Mosul’s western half in February. Residents fleeing the fighting reported that entire families sheltering in the basements of their homes were killed by airstrikes targeting small teams of IS fighters.

Thousands of civilians were estimated to have been killed in the fight for Mosul, according to Nineveh’s provincial council. A toll that does not include those still believed buried under collapsed buildings.

Also Monday, the United Nations said there was no end in sight to the humanitarian crisis in Iraq despite the conclusion of the fighting. Of the more than 897,000 people displaced from Mosul, the UN said thousands of residents will probably not be able to return to the city because of “extensive damage caused during the conflict.”

The infrastructure in western Mosul, where the fighting was fiercest, has been decimated. Iraq’s civil defense rescue teams — a branch of the Interior Ministry — said about 65 percent of the buildings in the Old City were severely damaged or destroyed. In other western neighborhoods, destruction was estimated to be higher: some 70 percent of all houses, buildings and infrastructure.

“Daesh, when they came to Iraq, their goal was to destroy everything,” said Hisham Hatem, an officer with the federal police stationed at Mosul’s main hospital complex, a series of buildings that was shredded by weeks of artillery and airstrikes. Hatem said IS used tactics to draw out the fight for Mosul to ensure little of the city would be left after the group’s defeat.

Regardless of the victory’s heavy toll, a number of celebrations broke out across Mosul’s east and west as victory appeared imminent.

Iraq’s special forces held a flag-raising ceremony on the Tigris river bank and Iraqi army soldiers danced and sang to patriotic music Sunday.

Muhammad Abdul Abbas, a 20-year-old solider sat on the sidelines of the revelry. He said he was happy the fight was over, but explained that his unit, like many others, suffered significant losses. Over the past nine months, 15 of his close friends were killed fighting for Mosul, he said.

Iraq’s special forces, who largely led many of the assaults in Mosul, faced casualty rates of 40 percent, according to a report in May from the office of the U.S. secretary of defense.

“Honestly, all this death and all this destruction — I don’t believe it was worth it,” Abbas said.

MOSUL, July 10: Iraqi forces slowly advanced on Monday to retake the last patch of ground in Mosul where Islamic State militants are holding on to a tiny sliver of the Old City, west of the Tigris River, a day after the prime minister visited the soldiers to congratulate troops on the hard-fought battle.

Brig. Gen. Haider Fadhil of the Iraqi special forces said that said even after his men, closely backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, retake the last areas of IS control, clearing operations in Mosul will continue to rid the city of sleeper cells and booby-trapped explosives.

Iraqi commanders say they believe hundreds of IS fighters remain inside the neighborhood and are using their families — including women and children — as human shields in a fight to the death that has slowed recent Iraqi gains to a crawl.

“There’s no accurate estimate for the Daesh fighters and the families who are stuck there,” said Lt. Gen. Abdul-Ghani al-Asadi, a senior special forces commander, using the Arabic acronym for IS.

He said most civilians left in the Old City are believed to be IS family members. “But we will not accuse them of anything,” he continued, “if they don’t carry weapons they are civilians.”

Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, fell to the Islamic State group in 2014, when IS blitzed across much of northwestern Iraq and subsequently declared a caliphate on the territory held by extremists in Iraq and Syria.

Iraqi forces launched the operation to retake Mosul last October and by late January, the eastern half of the city — which is roughly divided by the Tigris onto a western and eastern section — was declared liberated. The push into western Mosul began the following month and in June, Iraqi forces started the weeks-long push through the Old City, Mosul’s most congested district.

On Sunday, Iraqi soldiers celebrated recent gains, though Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi stopped short of declaring an outright victory.

On his visit to Mosul, al-Abadi met field commanders, kissed babies and toured a reopened market. But airstrikes and sniper fire continued amid the revelry as the extremists stubbornly held on to a small area in the Old City.

Over the nearly nine-month campaign, Iraqi forces have reduced the IS hold on Mosul to less than a square kilometer (less than a mile) of territory.

“We are glad to see normal life return for the citizens,” al-Abadi said, according to a statement from his office. “This is the result of the sacrifices of the (country’s) heroic fighters.”

A few kilometers away, special forces commanders climbed over mounds of rubble on the edge of the Old City to plant an Iraqi flag on the western bank of the Tigris, marking weeks of hard-fought gains.

The fierce battle for Mosul has killed thousands and displaced more than 897,000 people. Last month, as Iraqi troops closed in on the Old City, the militants destroyed the al-Nuri Mosque and its famous leaning minaret to deny the Iraqi forces a symbolic triumph.