Boys released from Kurdistan prisons face rearrest, torture in Iraq: Report

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) - Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Sunday that Sunni Arab minors who serve prison time in the Kurdistan Region for connections to the Islamic State (IS) risk rearrest after their release if they try to reunite with their families in areas controlled by Baghdad.

“The lack of coordination between Iraq’s two separate judicial systems has led to a risk of repeated prosecutions for the same crime,” said Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at the New York-based organization.

HRW interviewed boys between ages 15 and 17 who had been arrested by Kurdish security forces, convicted, and served sentences ranging from two to 14 months. None had returned home to their families who are living in areas under Iraqi federal government control.

"They said that they feared rearrest since they had heard that other boys who returned had been rearrested," read Sunday's report. "One boy who was rearrested said that he was then tortured to confess ISIS affiliation by Iraqi prison authorities."

The risk of rearrest means that they may not be able to return home and reintegrate into society, says HRW. Some are in contact with their families but feel they cannot return home because Iraqi forces or Hashd al-Shaabi militias are now in control of their towns or villages.

One, who HRW called "Karim" to protect his identity, told of being rearrested by Iraqi forces after being released by the KRG and returning to his village outside Mosul. He was held for 45 days, during which he was tortured. He was then transferred to a prison at Baghdad International Airport where officers beat him four times with plastic pipes before he finally was taken to a courtroom.

He was released after he told a judge he had been tortured during interrogations after already serving a full sentence at a reformatory in Erbil.

Others monitoring the situation of the boys told HRW that they knew of at least five who had returned home and were rearrested but had not been seen since.

Though there used to be greater coordination between the federal government and the KRG, these systems broke down after Iraq's hostile reaction to the Kurdistan Region's September 2017 independence referendum.

A recent statement by Iraq's High Judicial Council highlighted that it had ordered the formation of a committee in November to improve coordination between the two judicial authorities.

"However, as far as Human Rights Watch has been able to determine," read the report, "the committee has yet to start functioning."