The Ahdath

In 1968, the Iraqi government built an orphanage near Bashtapia Castle on the bank of the Tigris River in western Mosul. The building’s perimeter did not exceed one square kilometer. In 1982, the building was converted into the Department of Juvenile Justice. In 1986, it was turned into a prison which held prisoners awaiting their trials as well as convicts in criminal cases. After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, American forces took control of the prison and kept the local administration in place. The prison was used for detaining people who had been accused of acts of terrorism. Ten days after capturing Mosul, ISIS seized and modified the building, and used it to detain those it considered a threat. The ISIS Prisons Museum (IPM) recorded 14 interviews with former prisoners from two phases of the prison’s history. For the first phase, from 1991 to 2000, it interviewed three former prisoners who had been detained on charges of smuggling and fighting. In the second phase, the IPM conducted interviews with 11 people detained by ISIS in 2014. The architecture unit of the IPM has reconstructed the floor plan of the prison as it was during ISIS control. The floor plan also includes parts that were destroyed by bombardment. Former prisoners testified that the prison included rooms for interrogation and torture, a room for a sharia judge, two group cells for men, a section they believe was for women, and administrative rooms. The prison was designated for ‘high security’ prisoners – that is, people who opposed ISIS. Most of the prisoners were army officers and former candidates in Iraqi elections. Other prisoners included informants and people considered ‘rawafidh’ (renegades), a term used by ISIS to refer to Shia Muslims. It is thought that ISIS also kept women from religious and ethnic minorities and the wives of wanted men in this prison. The torture in The Ahdath Prison was exceptionally severe. Torture methods comprised of hanging by the limbs, flogging, khazouq (pushing a spike into the prisoner’s anus), putting salt on wounds, and electric shocks, which were sometimes applied to the prisoners’ genitals. On August 4th, 2014, less than two months after ISIS took control, the Global Coalition bombed the prison, leaving numerous casualties among the prisoners. Consequently, the prison was evacuated. Prisoners were then transferred to other ISIS prisons and detention centers in Mosul. Today, it is used by the Interior Ministry (the Police Affairs Agency, Department of Regiment Affairs, Third Emergency Police Regiment).