ERBIL — Human Rights Watch has expressed concerns over the deteriorating conditions at the Iraqi prisons were thousands of people are held, mostly on terrorism charges.

According to a detailed report by the HRW, most of the overcrowded prisons are in Nineveh province, north of Iraq, where the Iraqis liberated from the Islamic State (IS) back in 2017, three years after the jihadists group ruled the province.

“Tal Kayf, Faisaliya, and Tasfirat (in the Faisaliya compound), the three pretrial detention facilities in the northern Iraq governorate, have a combined maximum capacity of 2,500 people, according to a senior Iraqi penitentiary expert who requested anonymity,” reads the report.

“As of late June 2019, they were holding about 4,500 prisoners and detainees. Of that number, 1,300 had been tried and convicted and should have been transferred to Baghdad prisons. The authorities had yet to take the steps needed to transfer them, the expert said, even six months after some were convicted.”

“The Iraqi government urgently needs to rebuild and rehabilitate its detention facilities,” said Lama Fakih, acting Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Iraq has a duty to ensure that detainees are housed decently, in line with international standards.”

Bas News