More than 400 wives of ISIS fighters went on hunger strike in a prison in Baghdad

More than 400 women held in a prison in Baghdad on charges of aiding and abetting terrorism have announced a hunger strike. These are the wives of militants of the “Islamic State” organization. Among them are Russian citizens, the BBC reports.

In total, according to the BBC, about 600 women are held in the “Rusafa” prison in Baghdad – among them dozens of Russian women, as well as citizens of Turkey, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, France, Germany and other countries. Their children are also in the prison, only about a hundred, according to the estimates of the prisoners themselves (there are no children with Russian citizenship among them).

According to the interviewee of the BBC, prisoners complain about unfair sentences, unbearable living conditions and beatings by guards. She claims that at least 60 women and 20 children died in six years in prison due to the lack of timely medical care. The last child who died was three years old.

The women demand the improvement of detention conditions and a review of their sentences. For aiding and abetting a terrorist organization, they were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment, up to life imprisonment. According to the interlocutor of the BBC, none of the women she knew joined the “Islamic State” consciously, and all just followed their husbands. “Most of the women didn’t even know where they were going,” she said.

Iraqi officials did not respond to the BBC’s questions about the hunger strike and the death of people in prison. At the same time, the Ministry of Justice of Iraq admitted that the prison was actually four times overcrowded.

• The Islamic State (IS) group is recognized as a terrorist group in many countries of the world, including Russia.