2023-05-03 18:57:08
A group of relatives of Azerbaijani women imprisoned in Iraq held a protest in front of the building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on May 1. They called on the government to take measures to release their relatives from prison.
One of the participants said that the children of these women were freed earlier and brought to Azerbaijan. “We ask the government to help the mothers free themselves,” he said.
The women in the Iraqi prison sent a video with an appeal to their relatives.
“There are 121 of us, we were sentenced to life imprisonment in Rosaf B6 prison in Baghdad,” one of the convicts says in his video message. According to him, since April 25, women have started a hunger strike demanding freedom.
“There are women from Turkey, Russia, Ukraine, France, Germany, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and other countries in the B6 prison,” the application states.
The spouses of those women were killed during the fighting between the ISIS gangs and the government troops. “The Iraqi court sentenced us to life imprisonment without any evidence. They accuse us of terrorism. We did not participate in any work, we just came to visit our spouses in Iraq.
They have been keeping us in Iraqi prisons for 6 years in terrible conditions. During these years, many convict women and children died because they could not withstand the prison regime. There is no medical care for the sick and we were separated from our children 4 years ago. Help us return to our children,” says the convicted woman.
Sevda Javadova, one of the participants of the protest, says that her son was killed in Iraq. “My grandchildren are disabled, I cannot take care of them. If my daughter-in-law is guilty, let her be punished in our country,” he said.
According to official information, hundreds of Azerbaijani citizens fought in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan as part of illegal military units. Many of them died, some were arrested or deported to Azerbaijan.
Last time in 2020, 82 children were brought to the country from Iraq. According to the information presented by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Azerbaijan at a meeting with representatives of the International Organization for Migration in October 2018, 1477 people from Azerbaijan (1136 men and 341 women) went to Syria and Iraq to participate in the battles in terrorist groups. 903 of them (749 men and 154 women) are considered dead or missing.
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