Launch of IPM Website

After years of meticulous investigations, forensic documentations and laborious 3D modeling, the ISIS Prisons Museum (IPM) website was launched in October 2024 with an event at the National Theatre in London. It is the first virtual project of the Prison  Museum and chronicles and documents the crimes of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), focusing on the role of prisons with the goal of contributing to accountability.

At the event the museum’s director Amer Matar and the core team introduced the stories, methodology and mission of the IPM to an invited group of partners, funders and academics as well as the  interested public.

The museum’s website offers interactive topics built around reconstructions of crime sites, timelines, a dictionary, and in-depth articles as well as hundreds of interviews with former prisoners. Each topic offers 3D video tours through relevant prison sites, mass graves, villages and cities where ISIS committed its human rights violations. They are complemented by witness testimony and ample contextual information.

Of particular interest to the audience in the room was the methodology. By cross-referencing the forensic documentation of the sites with testimony from former prisoners, documents left behind by ISIS, and other sources, a fact-based account of what happened can be presented. Also, the goal of making the reconstruction accessible to a wider audience of families of the disappeared, legal bodies, academics and others was discussed. As a special guest Iraqi journalist Vian Darwesh, a victims advocate, underscored the importance of the museum for victims and their families.

More information on the IPM can be found in the About section