the devil's henchmen
Iraqi forces have killed thousands of Islamic State fighters. Some died by mortars, others shot by a sniper. Some starved to death in the long siege of the Old City, and some even made it all the way to trail in the years after ISIS was ousted from Mosul. An unknown number were captured and extra-judiciously killed, with their captors believing they have no humanity, and therefore do not deserve to be treated as humans.
Upon finding the bodies of fallen ISIS fighters, a select few civilians and soldiers, Kurd and Iraqi, decided to give them a proper Muslim burial, partially out of fear for their own souls rather than mutual respect.
But the majority of ISIS fighters were buried, "ashes to ashes, dust to dust", bulldozed into a mass grave of rubble and bones, never to be identified or remembered. So what do those we see as monsters deserve in death?
Photographed for The Atavist
Munir Ahmad Qadir walks through a cemetery in the Gogjali neighborhood where he buried ISIS fighters he found scattered throughout his neighborhood. He waves his hand over part of the land. “We do not care if they are Muslim, Yazidi, Shabak, whatever. We buried them for God,” Qadir says.
A femur bone sits in a ditch outside the village of Albu Saif, south of Mosul Airport. ISIS fighters captured when the Iraqi military took the village were taken here, executed, and left to rot.
A member of Iraq's Federal Polic picks up bullets as he fires off rounds toward ISIS positions on the West side of Mosul.
Young men accused of being ISIS fighters await trial at a prison in Hammam al Alil, where sentencing for many accused of being ISIS took place.
Light shines into a building in Hammam al Alil. In Mosul and villages around, bodies of ISIS fighters have often lay where they were killed for months before being plowed over by a bulldozer instead of buried.
A member of Iraq's federal police monitors the streets of a Mosul neighborhood on the West side from a safe house, looking for movement to report to troops waiting on the rooftops.
Iraqi Federal Police make their way through the maze of West Mosul, through cleared neighborhoods littered with bodies of fighters and civilians alike.
Family members and accusers bring documents to the United Court of Ninevah in Hammam al Alil where many accused of being ISIS were tried.
A cloth handcuff, used to bind the hands of an accused ISIS fighter, sits on the floor of the courtroom in Nineva.
A road runs down to the Tigris river on the outskirts of West Mosul. Many ISIS fighters killed during the Old City offensive were dumped into the river rather than given a proper burial.