The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) published a report Tuesday that raises concerns over fair trial standards in Iraq Islamic State (IS) prosecution cases. Among chief concerns were allegations of Iraq providing ineffective defense counsel, limiting the defense from challenging evidence, relying upon confessions for conviction and using torture or ill-treatment to procure such confessions.

The report detailed one such example of discovered unfair trial standards:

On 21 May 2019, UNAMI observed a trial hearing in Karkh court, Baghdad, where the defendant was sentenced to death. The court appointed the defense lawyer on the day of the trial. He had not seen his client and had not had access to the court files before the hearing and remained silent during the trial.

Additionally, UNAMI expressed its concerns over Iraq’s broad definition of terrorism. UNAMI alleges that Iraq labels victims of the IS, who were coerced into joining the group, as terrorists under its anti-terror laws. This designation could punish those who have vague connections with IS members as harshly as the actual IS members who committed serious crimes.

UNAMI monitored Iraq IS prosecution cases from May 2018 through November 2019. The report published Tuesday draws upon more than seven hundred cases during that time frame, of which UMANI attended over six hundred hearings. In the report, UNAMI made several recommendations to rectify these unfair trial standards.

The government of Iraq has criticized the report and issued several corrections in a letter to UNAMI.  Additionally, the Iraq High Judicial Council responded that the contents of the UNAMI report “do not fully convey the truth with respect to the size of accomplishment in the way of settling the cases of the detained persons who are accused of committing terror crimes from which the Iraqi people, in all its spectrum, suffered, nor does it convey the size of damages these crimes caused at all levels of life.”