SULAIMANI (ESTA) — We have nothing to do with the Badinan prisoners case, said the Kurdistan Region Minister of Justice Frsat Ahmad on Thursday, answering a question asked by Esta Media Network reporter in Duhok.
While dozens of Kurdish journalists and activists are suffering inside Erbil’s prison after they went on hunger strike due to their deprivation from legal conditional-release right from prison, Justice Minister Frsat Ahmad amid answering a question regarding Badinan political prisoners asked by Esta reporter said, “We have nothing to do with the Badinan Prisoners case”.
“The courts do not belong to the Justice Ministry, therefore we are not aware of it” Ahmad stressed.
A Group of journalists and activists are being held inside Erbil’s prison, allegedly charged with undermining the Kurdistan Region’s national security. However, some of them are in jail even without receiving a trial.
In July the journalists and activists whose number is 52 have gone on a hunger strike in Erbil’s prison, in a letter they said, the legal conditional-release right was being manipulated by the general prosecutor, “There were attempts by a political party to intervene, and strip us from that right”
The detainees known as Badinan prisoners have gone on a hunger strike for more than a month.
“The general prosecutor has no commitments to answer the prisoner’s call in order to execute the decision of conditional-release right for the prisoners,” a Human rights observer said.
30 MPs from the Kurdistan Region parliament in a statement have warned the authorities in Erbil recently, saying “The Prisoners are valid to go through conditional-release right”, but “Unfortunately they are deliberately being held inside the prison”.
“they are near to death and living in poor health,” the MP’s statement said.
