Iraq: children tortured over suspected ISIL links, HRW

Evidence emerging from Iraq shows how juveniles are being tortured into confessing to crimes, including being involved with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS).

Since 2016, Human Rights Watch says 41 juveniles have reported being tied in stress positions, given electric shocks and beaten by Kurdish security forces with plastic pipes, electric cables, and rods, in order to extract confessions.

The alleged torture occurred at a facility designed to rehabilitate juveniles.

According to Human Rights Watch, “several” juvenile inmates say “some” of the guards beat them for misbehaving, subjected them to death threats and verbal abuse and kept them in their cells for long periods of time.

Al Jazeera’s Natacha Ghoneim in northern Iraq spoke exclusively with the family of one teenager.