Iraq army executes deserters, rights body says

3.30pm

WASHINGTON - Iraqi military commanders are using executions and beatings to maintain discipline among their troops in northern Iraq where food rations are running out, a leading US-based human rights group has said.

Human Rights Watch said Iraqi soldiers who have deserted to Kurdish forces in the north told its representatives that the Iraqi military executed 10 deserters on March 26 and has organised execution squads to prevent others from leaving their posts.

The 26 soldiers interviewed in recent days spoke of extremely low pay, meagre food rations and mistreatment that included beatings and other punishments that left some scarred.

Several soldiers said their officers told them to stay at their posts during US-led air strikes and "die like men."

"Some days were so hungry we would eat grass which we mixed with a little water," a 21-year-old deserter from the Iraqi Fifth Corps told the rights group.

The soldiers said they decided to desert their units now because Iraqi forces have begun to retreat in anticipation of a joint US-Kurdish advance from the north, Human Rights Watch reported.

Human Rights Watch said up to 130 Iraqi soldiers have deserted since April 2 to the Kurdistan Democratic Party, or KDP, which governs two of three Iraqi provinces that make up the Kurdish zone, self-ruled since 1991 under a US and British patrolled no-fly zone set up to protect Kurds.

The group urged Kurdish and US forces to confer prisoner of war status on Iraqi deserters in northern Iraq in accordance with the 1949 Geneva Conventions.

The Iraqi soldiers reported good treatment at the hands of their Kurdish captors, Human Rights Watch said.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq war