Iraq arrests officers for extortion to release prisoners
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Iraqi authorities announced on Thursday the arrest of three officers in Baghdad and one official on charges of working together to forge documents to release detainees in exchange for money.
“The defendants were extorting those arrested to pay money, as well as manipulating investigation paperwork,” said Abdul-Sattar al-Birqdar, the spokesperson for the Supreme Judicial Council, in a statement.
Among the officers is a brigadier-general who is the director of Intelligence and Counterterrorism in Baghdad’s Karkh district, while the others are a major and a captain working in the same department. A fourth person facing the charges is an employee of the Ministry of Interior, also arrested in relation to the case.
Birqdar added that the officers were altering documents or fabricating “material evidence in the cases of detainees in addition to delaying the release of persons in custody until their families paid money in return, and this was after the courts had already approved their release.”
According to international human rights organizations, this practice is common and longstanding in the Iraqi judicial system and security forces.
After being ordered released by a judge, prisoners can routinely remain in custody for months, even if family members make multiple payments of hundreds or thousands of dollars. Even when no high-level security officials demand outright extortion, it is understood by loved ones that payments typically need to be made to office workers in multiple departments in order to guarantee that normal paperwork is processed.
The higher court has concluded all investigations and the defendants have been referred to the relevant courts awaiting their verdict, Birqdar concluded.
Iraq remains high on Transparency International’s list of national levels of corruption as widespread fraud and mismanagement in state institutions are some of the most significant challenges facing the country since the fall of the former regime.
According to the group’s 2017 Corruption Index, Iraq ranks 166, the tenth most corrupt country out of a total of 176.
Editing by John J. Catherine