ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Twenty-five people with various illnesses were released from the Kurdistan Region’s correctional facilities earlier this week following an amnesty from Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani, an official said on Thursday.
“We released 25 prisoners yesterday with a special amnesty, all of whom were from the Kurdistan Region,” Ihsan Abdulrahman, head of Kurdistan Region correctional facilities told Rudaw on Thursday.
“The released individuals are all ill, including some with cancer and others who have suffered strokes,” he added.
Kwestan Mohammed, Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) labor and social affairs minister, told Rudaw on October 5 that they had designated 100 disabled prisoners and those with cancer to benefit from a special presidential amnesty.
According to the Kurdistan Region’s laws, the president can only issue amnesty to groups of inmates on special conditions. A general amnesty requires an approval from the parliament.
According to the latest data from the Kurdistan Region’s general directorate of correctional facilities, around 5,700 inmates are held in correctional facilities.
In its 2022 report on human rights practices in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, the US State Department criticized the overcrowding in the Region’s detention centers, saying the number of detainees had exceeded the facilities’ designed capacity by 157 percent during that year.
The report also criticized the centers’ sanitation, hygiene, lack of adequate water, lack of adequate medical services, outdated infrastructure, and violence used during preliminary detention.
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