A senior official in the Iraqi presidential office said on Thursday that President Abdul Latif Rashid “contributed to the release of 7,894 prisoners and detainees within one year.”
In October 2022, the Iraqi president launched an initiative to address the issue of the delayed release of prisoners, in cooperation with the Ministries of Justice and Interior, the National Security Advisory, and the Judicial Supervision Service.
According to official information, the initiative has established an “electronic system” to facilitate the exchange of information between various institutions and departments, to follow up on the files of convicts before their release date to verify that they are not wanted in other cases.
The head of the Advisory Board of the Presidency of the Republic, Ali Al-Shukri, told Asharq Al-Awsat: “The electronic mechanism accelerated the release of 7,894 prisoners and detainees within one year, in the first step of its kind at the level of the Presidency of the Republic since 2003.”
Last week, Rashid discussed the conditions of prisoners and detainees in Iraq with Sarah Sanbar, responsible for the Iraq file at Human Rights Watch, and stressed that his country “is committed to the standards of implementing human rights, especially in prisons, improving the conditions of detainees and inmates, and providing legal and administrative procedures to resolve their situation.”
He added that the presidency was working closely with the Ministry of Justice and the relevant security authorities in order to expedite legal mechanisms.
Human Rights Watch had strongly criticized the Iraqi authorities in 2019, as a result of the “severe overcrowding in prisons and the degrading conditions of prisoners.”
For many years, prison inmates in Iraq have been suffering from delayed release after the completion of their sentences, due to administrative procedures, which continue to lead to severe overcrowding in jails and detention centers.
An official source in the Iraqi Ministry of Justice acknowledged the delay in the release of prisoners for various reasons, as well as the overcrowding in the majority of prisons.
The source told Asharq Al-Awsat: “About 64,000 prisoners, excluding those detained in the prisons and parking lots of the Ministry of Interior, have been sentenced in various cases ranging from terrorism, drugs, and other crimes,” noting that the existing 14 prisons could not accommodate this number.
The source expected that overcrowding in prisons would be addressed by the end of 2025, if the construction of new buildings in different regions across the country is completed.
