Süleyman Ahmet, who works as an editor for Roj News, has been permitted to speak to his lawyer after 211 days of imprisonment in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). Ahmet was also allowed to have a two minute phone call with his family in northern Syria. This follows an intense campaign calling for Ahmet’s location to be disclosed, and for his release.
Lawyer Beşdar Hasan, who participated in the delegation to visit Ahmet, said that the journalist had been charged with endangering national security under Article 1 of Law No. 21 enacted by the Kurdistan Region Parliament in 2003. He confirmed that no evidence against Ahmet had been presented.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) is accused of fabricating the charges against Ahmet, and of using torture and solitary confinement in their attempts to intimidate him.
Roj News, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and the Mina Committee to Protect Human Rights all made representations in April to the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances over Ahmet’s disappearance. No responses have been received, however.
Ahmet was arrested in September 2023 by police units affiliated to the KDP while crossing out of northern Syria. He had been attending a funeral and had all the proper documentation with him to enter Iraqi Kurdistan. Nevertheless, he was detained by masked men and taken to the city of Duhok.
The Duhok Public Order Office initially claimed that they were not holding Ahmet, although they also said he was accused of spying. A successful application was eventually made to the courts for lawyers to be granted access to visit him. However, when his lawyers, from the Suleyman Ahmet Defense group, attempted to visit the prison, they were refused entry and threatened with violence. Lawyers eventually discovered that Ahmet was being held in one of the unofficial detention centres run by Parastin, the KDP’s intelligence agency.
Ahmet is not the only journalist imprisoned in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Journalists Qahraman Shukri, Guhdar Zêbarî, Harîwan Îsa, Şıvan Seid, Şêrwan Şêrwanî, and Eyaz Kerîm have all received long prison sentences in Iraq for their work reporting on human rights, and critiquing the KDP’s complicity in Turkish aerial attacks on Iraqi Kurdistan. The US State Department recently issued a statement criticising the treatment of journalists by both the KRG and the Iraqi Federal Government.
