Zürcher Nachrichten - Syrians, Iraqis archive IS jail crimes in virtual museum

EUR -
AED 3.898523
AFN 71.644005
ALL 97.648604
AMD 411.303772
ANG 1.914021
AOA 969.589347
ARS 1059.019177
AUD 1.626695
AWG 1.912116
AZN 1.80447
BAM 1.955933
BBD 2.144347
BDT 126.914629
BGN 1.954472
BHD 0.400029
BIF 3075.943987
BMD 1.061402
BND 1.421364
BOB 7.364849
BRL 6.103346
BSD 1.062022
BTN 89.684337
BWP 14.448665
BYN 3.475501
BYR 20803.485902
BZD 2.140647
CAD 1.480529
CDF 3045.163175
CHF 0.936725
CLF 0.037924
CLP 1046.446944
CNY 7.676591
COP 4708.91149
CRC 543.462642
CUC 1.061402
CUP 28.127162
CVE 110.75745
CZK 25.388317
DJF 188.63237
DKK 7.459344
DOP 63.949359
DZD 141.630617
EGP 52.228957
ETB 129.544535
FJD 2.403068
GBP 0.83336
GEL 2.907944
GHS 17.422944
GMD 75.88837
GNF 9160.963762
GTQ 8.206946
GYD 222.173049
HKD 8.255656
HNL 26.609498
HTG 139.686101
HUF 410.858482
IDR 16798.071884
ILS 3.986711
INR 89.576785
IQD 1389.00842
IRR 44690.345182
ISK 147.502873
JMD 168.751502
JOD 0.752638
JPY 164.256789
KES 137.455129
KGS 91.487137
KHR 4303.986593
KMF 488.643096
KRW 1496.142353
KWD 0.326385
KYD 0.885002
KZT 527.030748
LAK 23308.395923
LBP 95101.650121
LKR 310.555796
LRD 196.730493
LSL 19.220988
LTL 3.134045
LVL 0.642031
LYD 5.1637
MAD 10.530204
MDL 19.010191
MGA 4935.52124
MKD 61.5696
MMK 3447.393404
MOP 8.50898
MRU 42.348517
MUR 50.002527
MVR 16.409566
MWK 1841.533028
MXN 21.879534
MYR 4.710487
MZN 67.850153
NAD 19.221764
NGN 1775.386729
NIO 39.027305
NOK 11.770703
NPR 143.49454
NZD 1.792862
OMR 0.408655
PAB 1.062022
PEN 4.021622
PGK 4.261796
PHP 62.358462
PKR 295.01699
PLN 4.35371
PYG 8297.565537
QAR 3.864301
RON 4.975817
RSD 116.983541
RUB 104.280832
RWF 1449.875599
SAR 3.988118
SBD 8.864043
SCR 14.393167
SDG 638.433911
SEK 11.579719
SGD 1.421722
SLE 24.195333
SOS 606.572528
SRD 37.398523
STD 21968.885515
SVC 9.293071
SZL 19.221951
THB 37.033402
TJS 11.288563
TMT 3.714908
TND 3.340765
TOP 2.485908
TRY 36.491299
TTD 7.216832
TWD 34.42106
TZS 2825.309757
UAH 43.984498
UGX 3902.449814
USD 1.061402
UYU 44.775161
UZS 13601.870796
VES 47.628304
VND 26906.549368
XAF 656.032617
XCD 2.868493
XDR 0.800092
XOF 652.762858
XPF 119.331742
YER 265.111791
ZAR 19.232187
ZMK 9553.893659
ZMW 28.913333
ZWL 341.771121
  • RBGPF

    0.0300

    60.22

    +0.05%

  • BCC

    -2.0100

    141.13

    -1.42%

  • NGG

    -1.2400

    62.9

    -1.97%

  • SCS

    0.0200

    13.67

    +0.15%

  • CMSC

    -0.1800

    24.54

    -0.73%

  • JRI

    -0.3000

    13.22

    -2.27%

  • CMSD

    -0.2100

    24.75

    -0.85%

  • RIO

    -1.4000

    61.2

    -2.29%

  • GSK

    -0.8300

    35.52

    -2.34%

  • BCE

    -0.1600

    27.69

    -0.58%

  • RELX

    -1.2100

    46.59

    -2.6%

  • RYCEF

    -0.1700

    7.16

    -2.37%

  • AZN

    0.4000

    65.19

    +0.61%

  • BTI

    0.0900

    35.24

    +0.26%

  • VOD

    -0.8500

    8.47

    -10.04%

  • BP

    -0.7600

    28.16

    -2.7%

Syrians, Iraqis archive IS jail crimes in virtual museum
Syrians, Iraqis archive IS jail crimes in virtual museum / Photo: Delil souleiman - AFP

Syrians, Iraqis archive IS jail crimes in virtual museum

After jihadists jailed him in 2014, Iraqi religious scholar Muhammad al-Attar said he would sometimes pull his prison blanket over his head to cry without other detainees noticing.

Text size:

Islamic State group extremists arrested Attar, then 37, at his perfume shop in Mosul in June 2014 after overrunning the Iraqi city, hoping to convince the respected community leader to join them.

But the former preacher refused to pledge allegiance, and they threw him into prison where he was tortured.

In his group cell of at least 148 detainees at Mosul's Ahdath prison, at times "there was nothing left but to weep", Attar said.

But "I couldn't bear the thought of the younger men seeing me cry. They would have broken down."

So he hid under his blanket.

IS, also called ISIS, seized control of large parts of Syria and neighbouring Iraq and declared a so-called caliphate there in 2014, implementing its brutal interpretation of religion on inhabitants.

The militants banned smoking, mandated beards for men and head-to-toe coverings for women, publicly executed homosexuals and cut off the hands of thieves.

They threw perceived informants or "apostates" into prison or makeshift jails, many of whom never returned.

- 'Messages into the future' -

Attar's story is one of more than 500 testimonies that dozens of journalists, filmmakers and human rights activists in Syria and Iraq have collected since 2017 as part of an online archive called the ISIS Prisons Museum.

The website, which includes virtual visits of former jihadist detention centres and numerous tales about life inside them, became public this month.

The project is holding its first physical exhibition, including virtual reality tours, at the Paris headquarters of UNESCO, the UN's culture and education agency, until November 14.

Syrian journalist Amer Matar, 38, is director of the web-based museum.

"IS abducted my brother in 2013, and we started to look for him," he told AFP.

After US-backed forces started to expel jihadists from parts of Syria and Iraq in 2017, "I and my team got the chance to go inside certain former IS prisons," he said.

They found thousands of prison documents from the group whose caliphate was eventually defeated in 2019, but also detainee scratchings on the walls.

Etched inside the football stadium in the Syrian city of Raqa, for example, the team found prisoner names and Koranic verses, as well as lyrics from a 1996 television drama about peace eventually prevailing.

Inside one solitary cell, they discovered exercise instructions to keep fit in English.

Matar says he was detained twice at the start of the Syrian civil war, in a government jail for covering protests against President Bashar al-Assad.

"I too would write my name on the wall because I didn't know if I'd get out or if they'd kill me," he said.

"People usually write their names, cries for help or stories about someone who was killed," he added.

"They're messages into the future so that people can find someone."

- 'Ask us for evidence' -

Matar and his team decided to film the former prison sites and archive all the material within them before they disappeared.

"Many were homes, clinics, government buildings, schools or shops" that people were returning to and starting to repair, said Matar, who is now based in Germany.

They managed to capture 3D footage of around 50 former IS jails and 30 mass graves before they were transformed, he said.

In total they have documented 100 prison sites, interviewed more than 500 survivors and digitised over 70,000 IS documents.

Younes Qays, a 30-year-old journalist from Mosul, was in charge of data collection in Iraq.

"To hear and see the crimes inflicted on my people was really tough," he said, recounting being particularly shocked by the tale of a woman from the Yazidi minority who was raped 11 times in IS captivity.

Robin Yassin-Kassab, the website's English editor, said the project aimed to "gather information and cross-reference it" so it could be used in court.

"We want legal teams around the world to know that we exist so that they can come and ask us for evidence," he said.

Matar has not found his brother.

But within the coming year, he hopes to launch a sister website called Jawab, "Answer" in Arabic, to help others find out what happened to their loved ones.

D.Smith--NZN