Abdul Baset Shukr Mahmoud

In this testimony, Abdul Baset Shukr Mahmoud tells the story of his first detention in al-Ahdath Prison in 2004, during the American occupation of Iraq and control of the prison.  He describes how he and a friend had just visited a patient in the Republican Hospital when they were stopped at a joint checkpoint of US troops and Iraqi police. The soldiers didn’t believe that they had visited the hospital. They took them to al-Ahdath Prison, where they spent 20 days.

Abdul Baset says that there were around 200 men crammed into the hall in which he was detained. Some had to sleep on the floor. He and some acquaintances kept to themselves, and did not mingle with the rest of the prisoners.

He explains that many of the prisoners were held there as a result of unproven accusations. Others were held for theft and other offenses. He says that at the time the prisoners were treated well by the guards. Visits were allowed, and Abdul Baset’s three-year-old son visited him in prison. In fact, the boy stayed with him for a week because he was very attached to his father and refused to leave.

Abdul Baset says that the food in the prison was good. Prisoners were served milk, cheese, bread, and tea for breakfast, and rice with broth for dinner. However, he says that the quality of health care was poor.

At one point, armed men stormed the prison, allowing most of the prisoners to flee. However, Abdul Baset decided to stay in order to prove his innocence. Later on, representatives of the US forces came to the prison. They believed his story, and released him with a certificate of innocence.

In Abdul Baset’s opinion, ahdath (juvenile) prisons in Iraq, like other kinds of prison, did properly serve their purpose. For example, rather than being entirely dedicated to minors, the Ahdath Prison in Mosul housed minors in one hall but adults in another. 

When he is shown a 3D reconstruction of the prison, Abdul Baset says he doesn’t know the uses of the rooms that were near his cell during his detention in 2004. He says that new parts of the building have been built since, with new partitions and more doors. Since the hall in which he was detained was destroyed by a Coalition airstrike, he talks about the other hall, which has a similar design. He describes the bathrooms and the wide, metal windows that prisoners stood behind during visiting time.

In the second part of the interview, Abdul Baset talks about his detention by ISIS in 2014. He was detained in a house that ISIS had converted into a prison in the Talkif area, north of Mosul. He thinks he was detained because certain ISIS members bore him a personal grudge. He says he was detained along with several Kurds, including Peshmerga fighters.

Abdul Baset explains that he was then detained by ISIS a second time in a prison near the Fourth Bridge area. This time he was charged with killing an ISIS member. He was tortured for 15 days, then released. He says that many of the men who were detained with him were later executed.