Exploiting women, harassing them, pushing them into prostitution and leaving them to sleep near toilets so they suffer from encroaching diseases. What is happening to women in Iraqi prisons?

Days passed and Adhraa could smell was the foul odor of the toilet in Kirkuk’s Tasfirat Prison. As a new prisoner, she was given a place in front of the toilet door. This seemed to be a custom in this prison, perhaps even in all Iraqi prisons. 

After a while, the prisoner supervisor – who is a prisoner chosen by the prison administration to perform supervisory tasks – decided that Adhraa, 32 years old, had become a veteran prisoner, and deserved to be transferred from the toilet door to another corner of the prison. 

In the absence of beds or mattresses, prisoners use the floor as both a sitting and sleeping area. Each of them spreads out a worn-out dress or blanket to sit and lie on. 

More than 40 prisoners are crowded into a prison measuring approximately eight square metres (26 square feet) with one toilet and one bathroom which everyone uses to shower. 

If a prisoner wants to use the toilet, she must stand in a long line until her turn. Adhraa was constantly kicked by other prisoners, both intentionally and unintentionally, throughout her stay near the toilet. 

As for showering, each group of prisoners is scheduled for one hour per week. During this hour, all members of the group must use the shower. Those who run out of time must wait until the next week. 

“But I would sneak into the bathroom at night and shower. I didn’t care if I got beat up,” Adhraa told Jummar. 

Because the prison administration fears that if they physically abuse the prisoners themselves complaints could reach the supervisory authorities and hold them accountable, it has devised a trick to beat them with someone else’s fists. The fists of the supervisor. 

The prison administration appoints a supervisor for each prison who is chosen from among the prisoners and gives her authority over the rest of the prisoners. This task is assigned to the most dangerous, cruel and ferocious of prisoners. 

The supervisor receives privileges from the administration in exchange for her services, such as an increase in the number of minutes of phone calls allowed weekly, or control over air conditioning and the television. 

In Adhraa’s prison, the supervisor had been convicted of seven cases of prostitution and drug trafficking. She is very cruel and shows no mercy to any prisoner who disobeys her orders. The supervisor is accompanied by a group of fawning prisoners looking for some crumbs of privileges. They provide her with support when the time comes for violence. 

The supervisor controls everything inside the prison, even the time for sleep. When she orders everyone to bed, the prisoners obey her. No one dares to refuse. 

The prison administration asks the supervisor to be cruel to the prisoners and to beat them severely in exchange for granting her more privileges. This method seems intended to spread panic among the inmates and prevent them from rebelling, complaining or raising objections in front of the monitoring committees that sometimes visit the prison. 

In these terrifying conditions, prisoners are forced to accept the misery and try to serve out their sentences without being exposed to harm. 

For example, they are forced to eat spoiled and meagre amounts of food every day. 

“The food is very bad. Breakfast includes one or two eggs and a few pieces of poor-quality cheese. Lunch is rice and bean stew which has been cooked with worms,” said Adhraa. 

Those who have money are saved from this hardship. They can order high quality food from a restaurant the day before to be delivered. 

The money reaches the prisoners from their families through the prison administration, who keep it in checking accounts. When a prisoner wants to buy something, the cost is deducted from her account. 

“Of course, the prison administration does not put all the money into our accounts, but rather deducts a portion of it as a bribe,” explained Adhraa. 

Prisoners buy from the shop that sells goods at prices that are several times their actual price in the markets. 

According to Adhraa, a “Number One” brand chocolate bar costs 500 dinars ($.38) in prison, while its price in the markets is 250 dinars ($.19.) A box of biscuits that costs 250 ($.19) dinars is sold for 1,000 ($.76) dinars in the prison shop.  

The prisoners in Kirkuk’s Tasfirat Prison only get a few minutes of sun exposure four times a week. The outdoor area smells like sewage. 

Citing inmate safety concerns, metal spoons are not allowed in these prisons. Instead, there are single-use plastic spoons, which are used many times between the prisoners, washed and redistributed. 

Much-needed sanitary pads are also prohibited, out of caution against them being used to smuggle drugs in.  

All this neglect and mistreatment leads to the spread of diseases among the prisoners, which is underpinned by very poor medical care. 

Adhraa said that a fellow prisoner was suffering from an illness that required her to receive treatment and visit the hospital on a daily basis. However, the prison administration took her to the hospital just once for a few hours and returned her to the prison under the pretext that there were no policewomen available to accompany her. 

However, wealthy and influential women receive better care. 

“With my own eyes’, I have seen prisoners being registered in the prison and leaving immediately, returning only to be counted as present during line-up,” added Adhraa. 

A doctor who used to work in a women’s prison who asked not to be named said that common diseases among prisoners include scabies, due to overcrowding and lack of hygiene, and anemia resulting from poor nutrition. 

The doctor explained to Jummar that prisoners also suffered from the spread of lice. 

The monitoring committees visit Adhraa’s prison at various intervals. Their visits are often ineffective. They rarely listen to complaints from prisoners and never take any corrective action. 

The prisoners fear the administration’s brutality if they complain to the committees. Adhraa rebelled once though. She stood up among all the prisoners forced to sit in front of a monitoring committee to reveal what was happening behind closed doors. 

When Adhraaa stood up, the prison official asked her to sit like everyone else.  She refused, saying that she would be more comfortable standing. 

When the head of the committee noticed Adhraa’s behavior, she asked her if she wanted to speak or report an issue. She answered in the affirmative. 

The prison official sent a clear signal to Adhraa to be quiet and sit down, but the head of the committee asked that official to leave so the prisoners could speak freely. 

“The prison official is a policewoman called Mrs. Jamila. Everyone is afraid of her,” Adhraa said. 

When Mrs. Jamila left the room, Adhraa talked about the many inhumane conditions faced by the prisoners. Adhraaa was not completely convinced that the committee would come up with solutions. She ended her speech with a reprimand directed at the head of the committee. 

“I told her that she should be ashamed to ask whether there were complaints or not. She could clearly see what goes on here.” 

The “Diamond” Unit can be bought at “Side Four” Prison 

In the “Side Four” prison located inside the Ministry of Interior headquarters in central Baghdad, the situation seems to be the same as the Kirkuk prison. 

Approximately 500 prisoners live in a prison that should accommodate no more than 200. 

Rasha, 48 years old, was imprisoned there for three years and saw how money creates class disparities inside the prison. 

With money, you can get a better place inside the prison, which is divided into four units: Diamond, Gold, Silver, and Rust. 

The division of the units is based on comfort and privileges. A prisoner in the Diamond Unit, for example, is given a place near the air conditioner in the summer. Prisoners in the Gold Unit get spots under the ceiling fan. The prisoners in the Silver and Rust Units rely on hand fans because the air conditioning and ceiling fans do not reach them. 

Diamond and Gold prisoners also get clean bedding, the ability to cook at convenient times, and phone calls at a rate of ten thousand dinars (about $7.50) per minute. They are also exempt from cleaning duty. Silver and Rust units are never exempt from cleaning tasks and spend their time sitting and sleeping in very narrow spaces or in the corridor leading to the toilet.  

To move to what might be considered a higher unit, a prisoner must spend at least 100 thousand dinars (about $75) at the prison store. 

Those who refuse to buy from the store may be exposed to danger. One night, Rasha was standing in line waiting to take a shower when one of the prisoners scolded her for choosing to live in the Rust Unit instead of buying from the store. After a verbal altercation, the prisoner pulled a blade from her mouth intending to attack Rasha with it. Rasha screamed in time to get other prisoners to protect her. 

Because she was kind to many of them, the prisoners supported Rasha. But the one who had the blade had her supporters too. A big fight broke out between Diamond and Rust prisoners that did not end until the guards intervened and settled the dispute with electric batons. 

An investigation was subsequently opened, but Rasha’s statement was later changed and distorted. She received a warning from the prison administration that she would face an “unknown fate” if she spoke about what happened before a supervisory committee or others.  

“They told me to reframe the story if I was asked and say that one of the prisoners fainted and so there were screams,” Rasha told Jummar. 

This is how the case was closed. 

As with Kirkuk prison, control over the prisoners is tightly maintained by a female supervisor who has been convicted of serious crimes. Such convicts are characterised by cruelty and ferocity. 

What the administration of the “Side Four” prison wants most from the supervisors is for them to put pressure on the prisoners to constantly buy from the shop. 

Rasha avoided buying from the shop because its prices were not reasonable. She saw buying from there as a waste of money. 

“I mean, is it reasonable that my family gives the prison administration 450 thousand dinars (just under $345) a month and that doesn’t get me through one week, even though my needs are very simple?” Rasha wondered. 

Rasha and others spend these large sums of money because a shampoo bottle that costs five thousand dinars (just under $4) in the market is sold for 25 thousand (about $190) dinars in the prison shop. One kilogram of rice is sold for ten thousand (about $7.50) when it is 2250 dinars (about $1.75) in the market. Bananas are sold for five thousand dinars (about $3.80) instead of 1500 ($1.15). 

Who dares to object or boycott the shop in the presence of brutal surveillance? 

The supervisor’s role is not limited to forcing the prisoners to buy from the shop but also includes managing all the prison affairs and telling prisoners what to do. 

Sometimes the supervisor wants to get the prison cleaned at three in the morning. She starts yelling orders at the prisoners who must wake up and carry out her orders. 

The female supervisor escorts, who do not even wash their own clothes and are waited on by prisoners of the Rust Unit, are exempt from this forced labour. The female prisoners of the Diamond and Golden Units are also exempt from forced duties. 

If a prisoner rebels against the control of the guards, she is punished by being transferred to a worse place inside the prison or even to another prison entirely. 

Once, a prisoner was transferred from the “Side Four” to Nasiriyah Prison in Dhi Qar (about 350 km – 220 miles – south of Baghdad) due to a dispute between her and the guards. 

Moreover, the prisoners of “Side Four” are forced to eat inadequate food every day. 

Every day, through cracks in the wall of the prison, Rasha and her companions would watch barrels full of meat being transported into the prison. But that meat did not reach them, and they never know where it goes. 

The meals that the prisoners get daily include broth that contains large amounts of expired oil. Sometimes they see insects floating in the broth. The rice in these meals smells of rotten food. 

But hunger forces them to eat this food regardless. At times, they resort to alternative solutions such as removing potatoes from the broth, washing them, frying them, and then eating them separately. 

As for those who have money, they cook their food on an electric heater, which is sold inside the prison for 25 thousand dinars (just under $20). 

Breakfast includes two pieces of poor-quality cheese, in addition to a boiled egg and one loaf of bread. 

Rasha and Adhraa face kidney and stomach problems due to the prison administrators who were mixing camphor with food to suppress the prisoners’ sexual desire. 

If a prisoner falls ill due to these miserable conditions, she does not receive the necessary medical care. This is because there is no free treatment. The prisoner’s family must buy the medication that the doctor prescribes for her and send it to the prison. 

Even this treatment is not safe from the hands of the weak-willed. 

“For example, if the doctor prescribes ten strips of pills for the patient and her family buys them for her, the prison administration gives her one or two and confiscates the rest under the pretext of keeping them for emergencies,” Rasha told Jummar. 

In the summer, when the temperature rises inside the poorly air-conditioned prison, cases of fainting occur among the prisoners. The administration, however, does nothing about these cases and simply leaves the task to the rest to deal with by pouring water on the faces of those that have fainted or slapping their cheeks with their palms to wake them up. 

“The administration justifies this by saying that first aid procedures are very difficult and lengthy,” according to Rasha. 

Rasha pointed out that she did not see any monitoring committee visiting the prison during her stay there. 

Vulnerable to harassment 

Due to her work and her exposure to many cases, Hanaa Edwar, one of the most prominent civil society and human rights activists in Iraq, agreed that prisons’ conditions in Iraq are miserable. 

Edwar told Jummar about the many problems in Iraqi prisons, not only the lack of staff and their incompetence, but also with health and food care. 

She also confirmed the story of prisoners receiving privileges in exchange for money, and the fact that the money sent by families to their daughters and sons in prisons often does not reach them. 

As for women’s prisons, Edwar explained that their number is very small, not exceeding ten in Baghdad. In the rest of the governorates, they use small detention rooms in police stations supervised by men, which makes prisoners vulnerable to harassment and sexual assault. 

She also pointed out that some female prisoners are accompanied by their children in prison. These children do not receive necessary care, especially medical. That is, they rarely see a doctor or seek treatment if they fall ill. 

Edwar stressed the need to equip women’s prisons with special care capacity and allow additional supplies such as sanitary pads and others inside. She added that there was a need to maintain and expand reform programs. 

Justice ministry prisons are “comfortable” 

Kamel Amin, the spokesman for the Ministry of Justice, said that not all prisons are affiliated with the justice ministry. Some are linked to other ministries such as the interior and defense. 

As for those affiliated with the Ministry of Justice, they are “good, their prisons are comfortable, have ventilation and sunshine, and there is no overcrowding,” he told Jummar. 

He continued that in the women’s prisons supervised by the Ministry of Justice, a prisoner can meet her family whenever she wants. But he acknowledged that there are health concerns which they are working to overcome as quickly as possible. 

“A prisoner can get an appointment with the doctor at any time. Treatment is generally available. If it is not, we inform the prisoner’s family to bring it to her. Or it is provided through donations from international organizations,” Amin added. 

He explained that the number of women’s prisons in Baghdad amounts to upto six, and they enjoy great privacy. Sanitary pads and underwear are available. 

Prisoners are subject to examination before being placed in prison to determine whether she is still a virgin or not, as well as to confirm whether or not she is pregnant. The prisoners are divided between the prisons according to the cases for which they are convicted. 

Selling bodies 

“All those responsible for prisons talk about the rosy life within them. It does not exist,” said member of parliament Nisan Al-Zayer, who is interested in the issue of women’s prison. 

What motivated Al-Zayer to follow up on this set of issues was seeing a group of pregnant girls handcuffed inside a court when she was completing work in the court for her parliamentary duties. 

When the MP asked the lawyer who was accompanying her about the issue of these girls, she answered that they were prisoners who were raped in prison and became pregnant. They came to court to file a complaint about their guards. 

From that moment onwards, Al-Zayer decided to use her parliamentary powers to follow up on the women’s prison issues. She began looking into what was going on behind the walls and discovered more horrors. 

For example, she discovered some prisoners were forced to visit several state officials as prostitutes who then used their bodies. A brigadier general confirmed that some of them were used as dancers in nightclubs. 

“All these violations are happening,” Al-Zayer told Jummar. 

The MP supports Adhraa and Rasha’s accounts of poor quality and limited food, poor health care, as well as access to comfortable accommodation for sale, and the collecting large sums of money from female prisoners in exchange for few services and rights, such as allowing them to contact their families. 

She pointed out that she had been subjected to great pressure from “gangs that benefit from the prison trade,” as she put it, as well as attempts to bribe her to drop the case. Unabated, Al-Zayer is determined to push things forward.