The Qaimaqamiya Prison

This prison was located in the Qaimaqamiya building in the Dubbat neighborhood of Mosul. The construction of the building started in 2012. It was intended to be an administrative office of the Iraqi government. Seven days after its capture of Mosul in June 2014, ISIS members mounted a sign on the building, which was still under construction, reading ‘Sharia Court’. However, the building was in fact converted into a prison in which torture and group executions were carried out. The prison had two cells, one for those on severe charges and another for those charged with lighter crimes. The former cell mainly held Iraqi military officers, intelligence service agents, police officers, judges, and former election candidates. The latter mainly held people detained on charges which ISIS did not consider ‘security cases’, such as selling cigarettes. According to former prisoners in the Qaimaqamiya Prison interviewed by the IPM, the punishments for the light charges were fines, flogging, or several months in prison. Those charged with more serious ‘security’ offenses, on the other hand, were tortured to death, executed at night, or thrown alive into the Khasfah hole south of Mosul. The accounts of several witnesses mention the use of ‘shabh’ by ISIS torturers. This meant that a detainee’s hands were tied behind his back and that he was suspended from them for three hours, until his shoulders were bruised or dislocated, or he died. Jailers also used electricity as a torture. Detainees were forced to sit on a metal chair connected to electricity, and were electrocuted until they lost consciousness or died. The names of certain ISIS judges and jailers became associated with the Qaimaqamiya Prison. They include Abu Aisha or Haji Zaid, who was the supreme judge of ISIS, or ‘Qadi al-Qudat’; the interrogation judge Abu Hussein, who was known as the ‘blood judge’; and the ISIS members in charge of torture, Abu Taha, Abu Jabal, and Abu Abdul Rahman. Healthcare was almost non-existent in the prison. According to witness testimonies, a detainee on a light charge received one piece of underwear every two weeks. Every two days, a nurse visited the prison and prescribed basic medication for the sick. The medication was sourced from pharmacies owned by the detainees. After the expulsion of ISIS from Mosul in 2017, the Iraqi authorities restored the Qaimaqamiya building.