In this report, we document the cases of six current or former detainees who remained in jail even though they had completed their sentences, allegedly because the process of releasing them was time consuming.

“I want the money today,” is a message that keeps coming up on Fahd Saad Radhi’s phone,

reminding him of his recent experience in Abu Ghraib prison, from which he waited in vain

to be released, even though he had completed his “sentence”.

Radhi was sentenced to two years in jail for burglary in 2021, and was sent to Baghdad

Central Prison, known as Abu Ghraib. He should have been released on the basis of a ruling

in December 2022, but this did not happen.

Ten days after the ruling, he lodged a complaint with the legal department of the prison, but

to no avail. Instead he was transferred from Abu Ghraib to “Tasfirat” Prison – known as the

“common” prison – where he ran up against the same bureaucratic measures, which

prevented him from being released.

During the month and a half he spent inside Tasfirat, Radhi was subjected to blackmail. He 

was asked to pay $500 up front to get out of jail, and then make a second payment, the sum of which was to be determined after his release. No sooner had Radhi paid the money and left prison than he

was bombarded with calls and messages demanding the second payment.

In this report, we document the cases of six current or former detainees who remained in

jail even though they had completed their sentences, allegedly because the process of

releasing them was time consuming. Meanwhile they were all subjected to financial blackmailing to which they had no option but to submit to, hoping thereby to speed up the procedures necessary to secure their release. In the case of a prisoner who has completed his sentence, these procedures entail notifying the Correctional Department of the Ministry of Justice, the judicial authorities and the Ministry of Interior to ensure that he is not being sought or been convicted in connection with any other case before he is released.

Despite the adoption in 2018 of the Prisoner Correction Law – which obliges the Correctional

Department to ascertain the criminal status of prisoners during the first month of their

detention, to ensure their prompt release on completion of their sentence – this report

reveals that this law is still not being adhered to in Iraqi prisons.

It is difficult to be sure how many people remain stranded in jail in Iraq, given the lack of

official estimates. But human rights campaigners and parliamentarians agree that there are many

held illegally in jails across the country.

Kadhim Albidhani, deputy director of Al Monqith, a branch of the Justice Network for

Prisoners – an umbrella group of organisation and activists – asserts that 60% of those in jail

are being held even though they have completed their sentences. He says that the ministry

has recently taken steps to reduce this percentage but that resolving the issue requires a lot

of effort. Omar al-Farhan, head of the Iraqi War Crimes Documentation Centre estimates

that 80% of all prisoners are subjected to financial haggling (to pay certain sums of money) to speed up the bureaucratic procedures necessary for their release.

Delayed release

Haidar Muntassir has sought refuge in Turkey from the painful memories of the eight years

he spent in Iraqi prisons, three of them after his release order was issued.

Muntassir went to prison in 2007 on kidnapping charges but appeared before a judge only

after three years, during which time he was subjected to various types of torture.

Muntassir was sentenced to life imprisonment, but the appeal court ordered his release in

2015. After this court order, Muntassir expected to be freed, but was surprised to face

continued bureaucratic procedures which meant he spent five months being transferred from one jail to another.

Muntassir says that during this time his lawyer entered into negotiations via a broker with

an official in the prison over payment of $1600,00, to secure his release. No sooner had the

deal been completed and the broker had received the money than all bureaucratic red tapes were suddenly resolved and Muntassir was released, after which he decided to emigrate to Turkey.

Even though Muntassir’s case preceded the adoption of the Prisoner Correction Law, any

person who prevents a prisoner from being released after the conclusion of their sentence

would still be accountable and could be pursued for their criminal act. According to lawyer and legal expert Ali al-Tamimi, the new law is the culmination of a series of legal measures designed to curb abuse in prisons.

Al-Tamimi thinks that deliberately delaying release of prisoners after the expiry of their sentence

is not only a breach of the law and the constitution, but a crime for which the perpetrator should be punished under laws in force in Iraq.

Inside Case

To verify whether prisoners are being held beyond the end of their sentences, we followed

up the case of Muhammad Karrar (not his real name), a detainee in Abu Ghraib. According

to his case documents his sentence ended three months ago, yet he remains behind bars.

At first his family expected his release would come once the routine procedures were

completed, but after waiting a long time the family decided to enquire about the date their

son would be released, but they received no reply.

Another prisoner then contacted Karrar and told him that “unknown officials” had insisted

on receiving a sum of money in exchange for his release.

The family were too poor to afford to pay the money demanded, so their son remains behind bars for an unspecified time awaiting a release date.

Karrar’s case is similar to that of Hassan Abd al-Hamid, detained in “Al-Diwaniyah 193” prison

south of Baghdad. We have obtained audio recordings of Abd al-Hamid appealing to be released, after the court had acquitted him four months previously of burglary charges, for which he had been

detained in 2022.

In these recordings, Abd al-Hamid refuses to reveal with whom he is negotiating his release for

fear of punishment, but he does not conceal the fact that the reason he continues to be

detained is his inability to pay the sum of money demanded.

In order to find out how the blackmail and bargaining process works, we contacted one of the brokers and this reporter posed as someone wanting to pay money in exchange for the release of a

relative.

Despite his extreme caution, the broker revealed there was a group of prison officials who

demanded money through him in exchange for speeding up release procedures.

The information we obtained corroborates testimony given by Yasir Ahmad Hassan, a

former guard at Abu Ghraib, about the procedure for releasing prisoners whose sentences

have expired. Hassan described a network of brokers inside the prison, each seeking their

share of the money the detainee pays in exchange for accelerating the release process.

Hassan says he himself witnessed the release of prisoners being deliberately delayed in

order to obtain money from their families.

This former guard said that the way the system works is that the relatives of the prisoner

are contacted, by some means or other, from inside the prison in order to begin the

negotiation process. If they pay up, the process will proceed smoothly. But if they are

unable to pay, the release of the prisoner would be held up indefinitely.

Stuck behind bars

Three months was the period Shayma spent inside “Site Four” women’s prison, even though

her sentence had ended in 2019. When we met this former detainee, she told us that,

during her time in prison, her family had been subject to several forms of blackmail.

“One of the guards asked my family for a phone number in order to keep them updated on

my release. But my family received calls from an unidentified number in which the caller

asked for two thousand dollars in return for progressing the paperwork to obtain my

release,” she said.

Human Rights Watch indicated, in a 2014 report, that Iraqi women prisoners were not being

released and instead kept in prison for long periods. A report from the Iraqi High 

Commission For Human Rights (IHCHR) – a semi-government institution that replaced the

Ministry of Human Rights – also condemned the “unjustified delay” in freeing those who

had completed their sentences on the pretext that there was no appeal decision (a court

ruling either overturning or confirming a previous ruling); or because there was no

confirmation that the prisoner was not sought in connection with another case; or because

forensic procedures such as fingerprinting, had not been completed. This is in violation of

the Prisoner Correction Law.

The IHCHR report also catalogues instances of abuse. It blames the delay in deciding the

conditional release of those convicted of offences on the fact that the Correctional

Department enquires into the detainee’s criminal status only just before their release date,

or even after it. The Correctional Department of the Ministry of Justice then sends detainees

back to the police stations where they had been arrested for them to be released there. But

what happens in fact is the start of a process of “endless bargaining” by detainees to obtain

their release.

We obtained testimony from someone employed in the general administration of the

Correctional Department, who refused to be named. He said that the process by which the

department wrote to police agencies to inquire about the prisoner’s criminal status is

delayed for weeks or months for no reason. He said he met relatives of prisoners on a daily

basis who complained that their sons were being kept in prison without any legal

justification and who feared they could come to harm, given the poor conditions in Iraqi

jails.

Prison overcrowding

The Iraqi Ministry of Justice has announced that prison overcrowding has reached 300% of

capacity, i.e., more than 60,000 detainees are being held in prisons with a maximum

capacity of 25,000. The Ministry of Justice also reveals that of the 60,000 Iraqi prison

population, spread across 28 jails, only 20,000 have been convicted of an offence.

This overcrowding only adds to the existing crises in Iraqi jails over bad food and poor

hygiene, according to the findings of a report by Arshad Al Salihi, head of parliament’s

Human Rights Committee, after he visited a number of prisons in Baghdad.

Member of parliament Nissan al-Zayer also identified this overcrowding during her visit to

“Al-Taji” Central Prison during May 2023. And she put it down to delayed release of prisoners

who had completed their sentences.

Al-Zayer told us that parliament’s Human Rights Committee had tried repeatedly to find out

the reasons for this delay but had received no reply from the Correctional Department or

the government.

The most striking aspect of this is that sometimes prisoners die in jail, with no cause of

death being given. This is what happened to Muayyad al-Fahdawi, who completed his

sentence for financial fraud in 2020. After three months of continued detention, his family

were shocked to learn than he had died.

His brother Muhannad al-Fahdawi recalls that they were on their way to the prison in a

renewed attempt to have the release order implemented, but were shocked to be given the

news of his brother’s death. Muhannad says he asked a prison official how his brother had

died but received no answer.

Limited numbers… and denial 

We contacted the Ministry of Justice, the body responsible for carrying out release orders,

and presented them with this evidence of failures to adhere to the Prisoner Correction Law.

The ministry spokesperson, Kamil Amin, attributed the time-lag in implementing release

orders both to the delay in police stations or the National Security Service (NSS) taking

charge of prisoners transferred from correctional services, and to the hold-up in conditional

releases, which require the approval of a judge responsible for the release.

Faced with the cases of blackmail we had documented, Amin did not deny that such cases

existed, but said they were limited individual instances that did not amount to a trend.

Concerning the delay in submitting requests for a prisoner’s criminal status until shortly

before the release date – in contravention of the Prisoner Correction Law – Amin blamed a

gap in the law itself, since some prisoners spent many years in prison, during which time

other charges could have been brought against them. Amin said that the Ministry of Justice and the

Iraqi judiciary had agreed to delay submitting these requests until six months before the end

of sentence, to ensure that the individual was not wanted in connection with other cases.

The spokesperson said that the Ministry of Justice was in the process of implementing an

electronic system to resolve the problem of delayed release by documenting the handover

to the relevant authorities of prisoners whose sentences had expired.

Human rights lawyer Ali al-Tamimi rejects the “excuses” given by the ministry for the delay

in releasing prisoners, pointing out that the law makes it a criminal offence to detain any

citizen without legal justification, for even one day.

Though the Ministry of Justice states that there are only limited cases of continued detention

without legal justification, Karrar, Hassan and many others continue to appeal for help in

gaining their right to liberty, which Radi and Muntassir were forced to pay money to obtain.