ISIS brutality did not emerge out of nowhere. Rather, its origins can be located in the regional and global history of interconnected surveillance and detention systems.

A significant number of ISIS leaders were once imprisoned themselves. Some were detained in the prisons run by Syria’s Assad regime; others were in the prisons of the Iraqi security forces, or in the prisons managed by United States forces, during its occupation of Iraq. Indeed, the ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, himself was detained in the American prison at Camp Bucca.

Some ISIS leaders were former officials in the Iraqi security services during the Saddam Hussein regime. This regime, much like the Assad regime in Syria, learned many of its surveillance, detention, and torture techniques from other sources, such as the Soviet Union, the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), and even Nazi Germany.

Authoritarian regimes learn from each other. The technologies of surveillance and torture cross over national borders and ideological groups with ease. Therefore, the ISIS Prisons Museum has curated a series of accounts by former detainees in various prisons around the world. The authors of these accounts were asked to describe the situation in which they were arrested, their conditions of detention, the abuses they suffered, and the circumstances of their release. The resulting texts allow the museum visitor to compare and contrast other prisons systems with that of ISIS, giving them a better understanding of the context within which ISIS emerged.

The views expressed in the articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IPM.