Iraq News Now

BAGHDAD — The anti-government protests that have shaken Iraq for months took a brutal turn Thursday when protesters slaughtered a 16-year-old boy who had fired a pistol in the air to try to shoo them away from his family’s home.

The protesters stabbed him 17 times, hung him by his ankles from a traffic light pole and cut his throat. In videos of the scene, people in police uniforms can be seen in the midst of the mob, seemingly allowing the attack to take place.

The rare outburst of violence by the protesters underscored the increasing tension on the streets after the killing of more than 400 protesters by government forces and a recent spate of attacks by other groups, while the lack of a response by either the police or bystanders, many of whom recorded the killing on their cellphones, raised questions about the complicity of Iraqi society.

The Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights condemned the police behavior as well as the lack of any effort by citizens to stop the violence. “The presence of hundreds, if not thousands, of citizens who stood still, filming and watching, is a dangerous development that confirms the society’s acceptance of violence,” said Ali al-Bayati, a commission member.

The protests have been driven by anger over political corruption, unemployment and Iranian influence in Iraqi politics. The protests forced Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi to resign last month, but the government has struggled to respond to the protesters’ demands.

The lynching victim, identified as Haitham Ali Ismael, had been berating the protesters for three days for obstructing the street beside his house and making noise, but he had been largely ignored. On Thursday, witnesses said, he climbed up onto the roof of his house and began shooting in the air with a pistol.

The protesters, apparently under the impression that he had killed someone, stormed his house, joined by a large number of unemployed people and children who looked as if they were barely adolescents. In video of the attack, the crowd can be heard chanting, “The blood of the martyrs will not be spilled in vain,” suggesting that they believed he had killed one or more protesters.

The crowd barged into the small house at the edge of the Al Wathba Square, where Ismael lived with his mother, and began stabbing him. The protesters took him outside, pulling off his clothes and dragging him bleeding through the streets.

“I was standing there when they hung this young man by a rope and tied him to the pole and then the rope was cut and the victim’s head fell on screws on the ground in the street and they entered into his head,” said Fadhil Muhammad, 25, a tuk-tuk driver.

Then they threw the boy on the bed of a police pickup truck, Muhammad said, “and in front of the police they began to slash his neck.”

“Unfortunately Haitham had been fighting with these guys for three days because of their shouting and gathering near his house, but I did not expect it to reach to the point of killing him,” Muhammad said. “He was still a young man.”

Abu Mohammad Alkinani, 45, a fruit and vegetable seller, said he knew the boy and had “never heard anything bad” about him.

“It was a painful scene, may God help his mother, and I wonder why the police did not do anything,” Alkinani said. “Maybe tomorrow this thing could happen with me and no one would help me.”

The leaders of the protest in Tahrir Square, the center of the protest movement, quickly distanced themselves from the attack and called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.

“We went out peacefully for reforms and to stop the bloodshed and to put criminals in the hand of the judiciary,” they said in a statement released on social media.

“What happened today at Al Wathba Square is a crime condemned by the demonstrators and condemned by humanity and punishable by law,” the statement said.

In videos, Iraqi police officers can be seen hurrying through the square as if they were disturbed by what was going on but perhaps afraid to interfere.

A police leader from the area, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media, expressed a sense of powerlessness.

The attackers were slashing the boy’s throat while he was in the police truck, he said, and there was little the police could do.

Gen. Khalid al-Muhanna, the Interior Ministry spokesman, denied allegations on some Iraqi websites that the riot police had entered the boy’s house and perhaps participated in stabbing him, but he did not respond to criticism of the absence of any effort by police to stop the bloody free-for-all.

“It is not true that the anti-riot forces attacked the house of the young man,” he said. “It was the demonstrators who did it, some of them wearing uniforms like those of the anti-riot police.”

The protests are in their 10th week, and winter is coming on. The nights are cold and some days are rainy, worsening the conditions for the protesters, many of whom are living in deserted buildings and makeshift tents. At the same time, the nature of the violence has shifted. Initially much of the shooting — whether with bullets or lethal tear gas canisters — was carried out by the Iraqi security forces, primarily special units including the Quick Reaction Forces, whose leadership is close to Iran.

In the last couple of weeks, however, there have been an increasing number of assaults, kidnappings and threats targeting activists by other groups.