Prioritize Sharing Information, Protect Mass Graves

Russian authorities have brought unfounded terrorism charges against 24 Crimean Tatars, 20 of whom were arrested during heavily armed raids on their homes in the spring of this year, Human Rights Watch said today. Security officers tortured four of the men, denied lawyers access to search sites, planted evidence, and later briefly detained two activists who spoke out on behalf of the arrested men.

 Human Rights Watch’s two-year investigation documented crimes including mass arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, torture, extrajudicial killings, and possibly unlawful air and ground attacks against civilians.

Children involved in armed conflict are entitled to rehabilitation and reintegration, not torture and prison.

Raqqa city has at least nine mass graves, each one estimated to have dozens, if not hundreds, of bodies, making exhumations a monumental task.

Nadim Houry, director of Terrorism and Counterterrorism division at Human Rights Watch, speaks in a conference organized by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).  

The Islamic State (also known as ISIS) executed and dumped the bodies of possibly hundreds of detainees at a site near Mosul.  

Egyptian internal security forces waging a campaign in the Sinai Peninsula against an affiliate of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) may have extrajudicially executed at least four and perhaps as many as 10 men in January 2017.

The rise of populist leaders in the United States and Europe poses a dangerous threat to basic rights protections while encouraging abuse by autocrats around the world.