The Former Turkish Consulate Prison

This prison was located in the former Turkish consulate building which is located near the Tigris River in Mosul’s Jousaq neighborhood. It was built in 1965. After capturing Mosul in 2014, ISIS converted the building into a security prison. It fortified the building and made changes to some of its rooms. It also installed five iron cages in the yard. Detainees were kept under the sun in these cages as a form of torture. One former detainee who was interviewed by the IPM describes it as one of the bloodiest ISIS prisons. He says he witnessed group executions of Iraqi army officers as well as of local and federal policemen. The detainees in this prison were mainly charged with being ‘apostate soldiers.’ That was how ISIS jailers described them for working under the command of Nouri al-Maliki’s government. The witness stresses that almost all detainees in this prison were executed. The very few that survived paid huge sums of money in return for their lives. As for torture, the witness describes how a detainee was stripped of his clothes and made to sit on an iron chair with sharp edges, and how a jailer stood on his thighs until the sharp edges pierced his flesh, while another jailer hit him on the head. The witness also explains that there was no healthcare in the prison. The detainees’ health deteriorated as they lived in dark cells without ventilation or any exposure to sunlight. Many suffered from scabies and other skin diseases. After the expulsion of ISIS from Mosul in 2017, the building was reconstructed and turned into an office for the Iraqi Red Crescent. Turkey moved its consulate to a new building in the Faisaliyya neighborhood.