After Iraqi prisons were filled with large numbers of prisoners with cases ranging from misdemeanors to major crimes such as drugs, murder, and kidnapping, the Presidency of the House of Representatives agreed to include the “Buy Freedom” proposal on its agenda with the aim of reducing overcrowding in prisons, in addition to considering it an additional resource for the state treasury, which sparked ridicule from bloggers and observers who likened it to “tribal segregation.”
The legal researcher, Ahmed Yaarub Al-Bawi, said during an interview with Al Aalem Al Jadeed, “After the failure of the political blocs under the dome of Parliament to approve the general amnesty law, today came the proposal for the Buying Freedom Law, which is a parallel law or an alternative to it.”
Al-Bawi adds, “This proposal will not address the real crisis. Rather, it could be more harmful than beneficial, taking into account that it is applied in some European Union countries, but the Iraqi societal environment is radically different from the environment in those countries.”
He continues, “Instead of addressing the causes and causes of committing crimes, they went to take a monetary compensation in exchange for the release of the criminal, and here the criminal will increase in criminality, especially for those who have money because they know that they can buy their freedom in exchange for a financial compensation.”
The legal researcher points out, “To address the crisis of prison overcrowding, it is supposed to build new prisons and pay more attention to the correctional institution, but what happens is the opposite. The criminal emerges after the expiry of his term more criminal and brutal as a result of what those who dealt with him in prison witnessed, and this indicates a major flaw in this institution.”
He explains that “such laws have special circumstances that do not currently apply to the tense Iraqi reality. We need the correct principle of reward and punishment and not to use prisoners for premature electoral purposes.”
Al-Bawi warns of “the necessity of studying the law further and involving the Ministry of Justice, the State Shura Council, and the Supreme Judicial Council to mature the law and avoid negatives that could have disastrous consequences on the Iraqi reality.”
Iraqi prisons suffer from great neglect and an absence of the supervisory role assigned to government agencies, as well as those responsible for human rights, at a time when there is talk of some political parties controlling prisons.
In July 2023, the Ministry of Justice acknowledged the spread of diseases in prisons due to overcrowding, indicating that it was seeking to coordinate with the Ministry of Health to follow up on the health conditions of prisoners, amid calls to find solutions to the painful reality inside prisons.
For his part, legal expert Ahmed Al-Abadi believes, during an interview with Al Aalem Al Jadeed, that “buying freedom for prisoners will provide the state with huge amounts of money and reduce the huge numbers of Iraqi prisons, and these two factors take precedence over the negative side of the proposal.”
Al-Abadi explains, “The negative side of the issue is that criminal people will leave prison only because they have money, while another prisoner may not have enough money to buy his freedom and get out of prison.”
He believes that “the best treatment for prison overcrowding is to pass a general amnesty law, from which perpetrators of premeditated murder, terrorism, and other major crimes are excluded, in order to reduce the state’s expenses on prisoners,” explaining that “Iraq needs this law more than buying freedom by those who have money only, especially since many of those whose sentences exceed 10 years are not included in this proposal.”
Earlier, a member of the Parliamentary Legal Committee, Raed Al-Maliki, said that the Presidency of the House of Representatives approved the proposal and included it in the agenda, indicating that the proposed law includes granting those sentenced to three years’ imprisonment the right to request that the remainder of their sentence be replaced with a sum of money as a fine, estimated at 10,000 dinar per day.
For his part, social researcher Ahmed Mahudar confirmed, during an interview with Al Aalem Al Jadeed, that “the draft law on purchasing freedom, which received the approval of the Presidency of the House of Representatives to be included in its sessions, includes those sentenced to terms not exceeding three to five years, and will encourage criminals to commit crimes.”
Mahudar notes, “This proposal legitimizes corruption and crime and encourages individuals to commit crimes without there being a deterrent or hindrance to them, given that it has become possible to buy a sentence period with small sums of money.”
Mahudar points out that “the Iraqi treasury does not need this law in order to be provided with funds, but rather it is essentially a heavy treasury with the oil and non-oil resources that Iraq contains.”
He points out that “this law was enacted by the parties or is trying to be enacted by the political class in order to help the corrupt and spoilers and those who embezzled and stole public money to escape punishment in exchange for sums of money, as the deals are for millions of dollars or tens of millions of dollars and therefore a small sum is paid and the sentence and imprisonment are carried out.”
On April 4, Minister of Justice Khaled Shawani announced that the city of Kadhimiya had been completely emptied of prisons, stressing that prison overcrowding would end by 2026.
There are no official statistics on the number of prisoners in Iraq, but conflicting numbers confirm that it is approximately 100,000 prisoners distributed among the prisons of the Ministries of Justice, Interior, and Defense, in addition to prisons owned by security services such as the Intelligence and National Security Service, the Counter-Terrorism Service, and the Popular Mobilization Forces, amid continued talk of illegal secret prisons. It is declared widespread throughout the country and includes thousands of detainees, according to observers.
In 2023, Prime Minister Muhammad Shiaa Al-Sudani called on victims of torture in prisons and security centers to file complaints supported by evidence and allocated an e-mail to receive complaints.
The Iraqi Center for Documentation of War Crimes revealed in its report, at the end of last year, the death of about 50 detainees as a result of torture and medical negligence in prisons, indicating that between January and August 2023, 49 detainees died, 39 of them in Nasiriyah Central Prison, Eight in Taji prison, north of Baghdad, in addition to documenting a suicide case in Mosul crime police stations in Nineveh Governorate (north), and one death in an anti-crime center in the capital, Baghdad.
