On February 5, 2017, Aladdin Farhad was driving his car alongside some of his family members, in the Nurqal neighbourhood in Mosul, when he was stopped at a checkpoint by members of the Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU).
The members of the PMU then proceeded to arrest Farhad and confiscate his car, leaving behind the members of his family. Since then, his fate and whereabouts have remained unknown.
The PMU is an umbrella organisation composed of various militias that supported the Iraqi armed forces during the fight against ISIL. On December 19, 2016, the PMU were incorporated into the Iraqi armed forces, and on March 8, 2018, a prime minister’s decree formally included the group in the country’s security forces.
More than two years after Farhad’s arrest, in July 2019, a former detainee informed Farhad’s family that he had seen him at the Faisalyia Detention Centre in Mosul.
That same month, in July 2019, Farhad’s family appointed a lawyer to look for him in various prisons and detention centers in Mosul, and especially in the Faisalyia Detention Centre, but to no avail. At the beginning of 2020, his family searched for his name in the detainees’ lists at Naseriyah prison and Baghdad Central Prison, but to no avail.
On April 22, 2022, MENA Rights Group and the Iraqi War Crimes Documentation Center requested the Urgent Intervention of the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances.
