Islamic State youth fighters keep the faith in prison

Iraqi youngsters are doing time for their roles in the “Islamic State” terror group. Some will leave jail even more radicalized. As one of the first foreign journalists, Judit Neurink visited Irbil’s juvenile prison.

“I don’t know how many Hashed I have killed,” says Khayralah Mezadivan, 18, about the battles he fought for the militant “Islamic State” group against the Iraqi Shiite militias, the Hashed al-Shabi. He jokes: “Nobody kept score.”

He sits at a table in the library of the juvenile prison (photo above) in the Iraqi Kurdish capital, Irbil, where he is serving a nine-month sentence. Here, over a hundred Arab youngsters taken prisoner by Kurdish peshmerga troops are being held for their involvement with IS. Some deny having trained or been stationed on an IS base, others admit to it. But Mezadivan, who wears his long hair under a black cloth tied like a tight cap around his head. and his trousers above the ankles, as IS ordered men to do, freely admits not only to manning checkpoints, but also to working with the IS police and even fighting on the frontline.

He was one of the lion cubs of the so-called Caliphate, the youths the Islamists looked upon as their future. Why did he answer the call as a 14-year-old in Mosul? “I liked the way they explained the Quran. And the situation was bad: There was no work, no water, no electricity. And they threatened punishments, too, if I didn’t join.” The prison staff consider him dangerous, as the paradise IS promised still entices him.

In Iraq’s three-year war against IS, thousands of men and youngsters were arrested for ties to the terror group. They ended up in Kurdish and Iraqi prisons, and their total number is thought to be around 20,000. How many are under 18 is unclear; statistics are lacking. Prison visits by researchers or reporters are rare and short, and like here in Irbil, all cameras, phones and other recording devices are prohibited.

Hundreds of underage boys are imprisoned in Iraqi Kurdistan. In March 2017, the rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported 150 minors in Kurdish prisons, but that number has probably increased as the war did not end until late July of that year. Statistics on the number of underage inmates in Iraqi prisons do not exist. HRW recently reported that Iraqi judges had tried 400-500 underage prisoners, among them foreigners. According to reports, some of them have been given long sentences.

Source: DW