By Al-Fassel | 2024-12-10

The harrowing testimonies of more than 500 survivors imprisoned by the "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" (ISIS) have been documented in an online archive that is now open to the public.

The ISIS Prisons Museum (IPM) brings together accounts gathered by journalists, filmmakers and human rights activists in Syria and Iraq.

It includes virtual visits of former ISIS detention centers and first-hand accounts about life inside them, offering the most comprehensive documentation yet of ISIS's vast detention network, mapping over 100 prisons and 30 mass graves.

The digital archive, which opened to the public in October, includes 3D footage of about 50 former ISIS jails and 30 mass graves, as well as over 70,000 ISIS documents, AFP reported.

It shares survivors' stories of the horrors the group inflicted on the population in areas of Iraq and Syria it overran in 2014 and controlled until its ouster in 2017.

Among the testimonies shared is that of Muhammad al-Attar, an Iraqi religious scholar imprisoned in Mosul's Ahdath prison for defying ISIS.

Al-Attar described nightly "investigations, torture and killings" carried out by the ISIS death squad, with prisoners taken from their cells and executed at al-Khasfa -- a sinkhole south of Mosul that ISIS used as a mass grave.

The site is believed to hold the remains of 4,000 victims, according to Ninawa province director of forensic medicine Hassan al-Anazi.

Inside the crowded cells the despair was overwhelming, al-Attar said, adding that "there was nothing left but to weep."

Search for answers

The scale of ISIS atrocities is staggering. The United Nations estimates there are more than 200 mass graves in Iraq alone, containing the remains of up to 12,000 victims.

Leading the IPM project is Amer Matar, a Syrian journalist whose brother is among the thousands believed to have been captured by ISIS.

After the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) ousted ISIS from its last Syria stronghold, Matar and his team entered the abandoned prisons and gathered over 70,000 documents, photographing names etched on cell walls.

Mosul-based journalist Younes Qays, who oversaw the data collection in Iraq, told AFP he was profoundly affected by the account of a Yazidi woman raped 11 times during her captivity.

ISIS targeted the Yazidi minority with particular brutality, abducting, enslaving and slaughtering thousands. An estimated 2,700 Yazidis remain missing, including 1,300 children.

The IPM is now developing "Jawab" ("Answer"), a project to help families determine the fate of loved ones who vanished during ISIS rule, offering a glimmer of hope for those who, after a decade, are still searching for answers.