BBC says ISIS suspects women going on hunger strike in prison in Iraq
ERBIL, KRI, Iraq (North Press) – The British BBC broadcaster said on Saturday that at least 400 women have been going on a hunger strike for the second consecutive week in “a high-security prison in Iraq’s capital Baghdad.”
BBC said in its report that the group of women, who are on the hunger strike, is said to include foreign nationals from Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Syria, France, Germany and the US.
These women, who are thought to have not eaten since 24 April, are imprisoned on charges of belonging to Islamic State (ISIS) and they say “were unfair trials,” the report read.
It said that about 100 children are also included in the prison.
The report added, “Tens of thousands of former members were rounded up. It is alleged many of the men were summarily executed, but thousands of women and children were taken into detention. Some were repatriated to their home nations, but many remain in Syrian and Iraqi jails.”
Video footages, the BBC obtained, from inside the facility in Baghdad showed “emaciated women lying motionless on hard stone floors.”
The women’s sentences range from 15 years to life imprisonment. Some have been sentenced to death, but no executions have been carried out, according to the report.
These women have started the strike “against both their convictions and the conditions they are being held in.”
The report went further saying that the detained women said “they had had no contact with their embassies, and diplomatic representatives had not been present at many of their trials.”
These women detained the prison, which is located east of Baghdad, are serving sentences for various crimes – not all terror-related, according to the report.