Uzbek women in Iraqi prison ask to return to their homeland

TASHKENT -- Uzbek women serving time in an Iraqi prison should be able to finish out their sentences in their home country, observers say, noting that reuniting with their families is an essential element of rehabilitation.

On April 27, 44 female Uzbek prisoners appealed to President Shavkat Mirziyoyev with a request for assistance returning home.

The women are being held in Baghdad's Rusafa prison on various charges stemming from their past affiliation with the "Islamic State" (IS).

Many of their children have already been repatriated to Uzbekistan and have undergone rehabilitation.

Their formal request was captured in a low-quality video about one minute long that circulated online. The recording shows several women and children in a room, presumably one of the areas of a prison.

Their faces are covered and they sit still, and only the children wave their hands when the cell phone camera points in their direction.

One of the women reads the appeal from a piece of paper:

"We are women from Uzbekistan, in the 6th Women's Prison in Baghdad, Iraq. For six years now we have been serving a sentence here on charges forcibly imposed on us. We very much want to be freed from this sentence and return to our country, to our families, to our parents and children. And we ask you for help in this matter, Shavkat Miromonovich [Mirziyoyev]."

"It has been four years since our children were taken from us. We haven't seen them since. We don't see our parents. We announced a hunger strike on April 24, 2023," the woman continues.

Hunger strike

The women appear to be part of a larger hunger strike taking place in the prison, with at least 400 women participating including foreign nationals from at least eight countries, the BBC reported May 5.

About 100 children are also being held at the facility, many reportedly born there.

The women are protesting both their convictions, which they say are the result of unfair trials, and the conditions they are being held in, the BBC reported.

The inmates who spoke to the BBC on an illegally-held mobile phone said they were held 40 to a cell, and were often subjected to beatings and inhumane treatment.

They claimed around 60 adult inmates and up to 30 children had died inside Rusafa prison over the past six years.

The BBC and other outlets have not been able to verify their claims.

Khayot Shamsutdinov, head of the General Prosecutor's Office press service, commented on the Uzbek female prisoners' video message on April 28.

He said Uzbek authorities are aware of the difficult and unacceptable conditions of the inmates at the prison.

"In 2019, under an agreement with Iraqi authorities, 64 children of convicted women were taken to Uzbekistan. They were transferred to the care of relatives based on where they lived, as well as to orphanages," said Shamsutdinov.

He also clarified that the adults in the video were convicted members of IS, a terrorist organisation, and once served in its ranks in Syria and Iraq.

Iraqi authorities arrested the women in 2017. Four of them are serving life sentences, while the rest were sentenced to 15-20 years.

Currently, the convicted women are set to be returned to Uzbekistan at the end of their sentences in accordance with international law.

'The most dreadful lesson'

Between 2019 and 2021, Uzbekistan conducted five special humanitarian efforts dubbed Operation Dobro (Good Deed), or Operation Mekhr in Uzbek, to repatriate women and children who were in combat zones and refugees camps in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

These efforts ultimately brought more than 550 Uzbek citizens back to their homeland.

However, some believe more needs to be done to help these women, many of whom followed their husbands or were duped into joining IS's so-called "caliphate" in Iraq and Syria.

One of these returnees is Khatira Yuldasheva, who was born in Namangan region in 1986.

"When I was 13, in 1999, my mother and I traveled to Afghanistan," she said. "I got married early. At 15, I gave birth to my first child in 2001. Then in 2003, we ended up in Syria."

In Syria, Yuldasheva was married several times and gave birth to five more children.

After many years of wandering with her children, she ended up in Syria's al-Hol refugee camp, where the family spent three years. One of her sons died, one remained in Syria and Yuldasheva returned home with her oldest daughter.

Her other children later returned by plane -- a son who was wounded by shrapnel, a set of fraternal twins and the youngest, a daughter, 10.

The eldest daughter, who has since become a seamstress, returned home with bronchitis and stomach issues.

"The authorities helped with housing, donated a sewing machine and paid for my daughter's treatment," she said.

"Gulsum, my daughter, got a profession. My children go to school, and my grandson attends kindergarten."

But the death of her son was "the most dreadful lesson for me", she said.

Calls to help women

Uzbekistan strictly adheres to the stated principles of Operation Mekhr: women and children who, for various reasons, ended up in territories controlled by extremist groups should be repatriated if possible, said Ravshan Nazarov, a senior researcher at the Institute of State and Law of the Uzbek Academy of Sciences.

"Even if these women already received sentences in foreign countries, they should be returned to serve out the remaining time in their homeland," Nazarov said.

"This will let them interact with relatives and friends, which is a very important element of socio-psychological rehabilitation and resocialisation."

Moreover, according to Article 23 of the new version of the Constitution, "The Republic of Uzbekistan guarantees the safety and protection of its citizens both on its own territory and abroad."

Viktor Mikhailov, director of the Centre for the Study of Regional Threats in Uzbekistan, says that, as far as he knows, these prisoners are the wives of militants.

"They did not personally take up weapons, although they are quite radical in their views," he said, adding that Uzbek officials have been working with Iraqi authorities to allow Uzbek citizens to serve their sentence in their home country.

Even if an agreement cannot be reached on repatriating Uzbek citizens, he said, "it may still be possible to at least agree on reduced terms".