ISIS prisoners seize partial control of Hasakah prison

Holly Johnston

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Suspected Islamic State prisoners have seized control of the ground floor of a prison in northeast Syria following a riot on Sunday evening, officials have confirmed.

At around 10pm on Sunday night, a group of suspected ISIS militants rioted inside Sanaa prison in Hasakah’s Geweran neighbourhood, breaking CCTV cameras and smashing down walls. 

Prisoners managed to take control of the ground floor of the building, prison director Rubar Hassan told a Rudaw reporter outside the facility on Monday morning.

An unspecified number of prisoners also escaped from the prison, some of whom were later re-arrested by security forces. Kurdish authorities refused to confirm the numbers of those who escaped. 

Somewhere between 3,000-5000 prisoners from around 50 nationalities are held in the prison, most of whom were detained by Kurdish and coalition forces in the last ISIS stronghold of Baghouz in March 2019. 

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) confirmed the incident, claiming that four militants had escaped the facility.

The SDF, which leads the fight against the terror group in the area, was supported by coalition air forces, the statement added.

"ISIS terrorists managed to sabotage and remove the internal doors of the cells, create holes in the dormitory walls, and control the ground floor of the prison," SDF spokeperson Kino Gabriel said in a Monday statement.

However, Gabriel denied anyone had escaped the facility. 

"We confirm that there are no escape incidents [among] the detainees, and that the situation in the detention center is completely under control."

The jailbreak was confirmed by both the SDF and the US-led coalition.

“There has been an attempt prison break by ISIS in Hasakah, the prisoners were able to remove the internal doors of the prison,” said Mustafa Bali, head of the SDF Press Office, in a tweet Sunday evening.

“The situation is tense inside the prison currently and we have sent anti-terror forces and additional troops to the prison to control the situation,” he added. 

The coalition provided aerial surveillance at the facility, which holds “low-level ISIS members,” according to spokesperson Colonel Myles B. Caggins III. 



A senior member of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) who runs the prison in northeast Syrian acknowledged that an uprising had taken place.

The official, who asked to remain anonymous, told AFP that Islamic State members in the prison had revolted.

"Some of them managed to get out into the prison courtyard," the source added.

"Security forces are on high alert. International coalition planes are flying over the prison and the region."

Armed conflict has strained the SDF's ability to secure the prisons and camps holding approximately 12,000  suspected ISIS fighters across northeast Syria. 

The launch of Turkey's Operation Peace Spring in October 2019 saw several prison breaks across the region as Kurdish-led forces were redeployed to the front lines on the border, leaving the detention facilities understaffed. 

The militant group were accused by the SDF of taking advantage of the ensuing chaos to launch insurgency attacks and escape attempts in the area. 

A car bomb exploded near Geweran prison in mid October, mere days after suspected militants managed to escape a prison in the city of Qamishli. The following day, at least 785 suspected militants fled a displacement camp in Ain Issa, some 180km west of Hasakah. 

Though the final territorial holdings of the self-proclaimed "caliphate" of the Islamic State was decimated in March 2019, the terror group remains active in both Iraq and Syria.

Remnants of the militant group have been able to maintain an insurgency by hiding out in the rugged Hamrin Mountains, about 70 kilometers south of the disputed city of Kirkuk.
 
"It's difficult to put a number on ISIS militants in Iraq or Syria, what we focus on is their capability," US Colonel Myles Caggins III told Rudaw English on Sunday. 
 
"ISIS used to hold 110,000 square kilometers of territory. Now they hold zero, and we assess that they cannot hold physical territory, but they are able to have a low level insurgency where they can conduct crimes and harass people and small attacks," Caggins said.

The spokesperson has credited the SDF for their work in fighting the terror group, who fight ISIS sleeper cells on a daily basis. 

“ISIS [has] been unable to resurge and they cannot hold physical territory because of the pressure from the Syrian Democratic Forces,” he told reporters earlier this month. 

However, ISIS is “not down and out,” he added.

Some 7,500 foreign troops are in Iraq as part of the US-led coalition helping local troops fight the remnants of ISIS, but those numbers are being significantly drawn down this month.