The Ishik School Prison

This prison was in the Ishik School building in the Dubbat neighborhood in Mosul. This was a Turkish school built in 2008. It had branches in other locations in Iraq. Two months after capturing Mosul in June 2014, ISIS converted the school into a night court and prison for Iraqi military and police officers and candidates for election in the period before ISIS took control. ISIS made changes to the two-story building including building four mobile rooms (caravans) on the roof, which were used for torture and execution. According to former prisoners in the Ishik School Prison interviewed by the IPM, interrogation, torture, and sentencing were all done at night. The main torture methods were pulling out nails and puncturing feet with an electric drill. The main names associated with this prison are Abu Aisha or Haji Zaid, who was the judge in charge of the prison and the supreme judge of ISIS or Qadi al-Qudat; Abu Barzan, the leader of the ‘death squad’; and a group of jailers including Abu Bareq and Abu Asad. According to the witnesses, the leader of the death squad at the prison had the authority to kill any detainee during interrogation by shooting them in the head. After the expulsion of ISIS from Mosul in 2017, the building was restored and became the headquarters of a private contracting company.