More than 39,000 Iraqi men and women and their families were abused and suffered sectarian discrimination in prisons in 2017, a new report by the Baghdad Centre for Human Rights revealed.

The report said violations in Iraqi prisons have increased in 2017 and extended to include the prisoners’ families. According to the report, the prisoners’ families were harassed when they visited the detainees and prevented from bringing food, clothing or medicines to them, forcing the prisoners to buy the needed material from the prison administration at high prices that exhausted the families financially.

The centre said the report is based on testimonies collected from detainees as well as a number of their families as well as Iraqi lawyers and prison officials.

The report ranked the Nasiriyah Central Prison, south and the Taji Central Prison, as the worst in terms of mistreating the prisoners.

According to the report, there are 38,000 men and more than 900 women detained in Iraqi prisons, noting at the same time that the Iraqi Ministry of Justice blocks official data from the public as well as international and local human rights organisations due to poor conditions in detention facilities, the prevalence of serious diseases and medical negligence.

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