An ‘Urgent Action’ statement from Amnesty on July 5 claimed that Ahmed was being “arbitrarily detained” after completing a five year prison sentence which was set to conclude on March 6, 2015.
Amnesty says it wrote to the KRG on two occasions, May 2015 and March 2016, in which they asked to know exactly why Ahmed was being detained.
Ahmed was initially arrested on February 2000 and held for the ensuing decade after he, according to Amnesty, was found by police in a car with explosives, which was driven by an acquaintance of his.
In March 2011 Ahmad was charged with “sending orders and instructions from prison to his followers in Kirkuk and Mosul to carry out terrorist attacks in Dohuk in 2009.” That charge landed him another five years in jail.
Amnesty has accused the KRG of having “fabricated” these charges and allege that Ahmad “received an unfair trial when convicted in 2011.”
Amnesty consequently demanded that Ahmed be released immediately.
The head of the KRG’s High Committee to Respond to International Reports, Dr. Dindar Zebari, responded to Amnesty’s Urgent Action Update on Ahmed and sought to provide “some context” to the case.
It pointed out that Ahmed was one of the main individuals responsible for establishing the Ansar al-Islam group, which has terrorized Kurds in past. Tellingly most of its members went on to join the Islamic State (ISIS) in the summer of 2014.
According to the KRG statement Ahmed was in Afghanistan where he “met/corresponded with Osama Bin Laden,” who recommended he establish Ansar al-Islam.
The KRG statement also pointed out that, in addition to being charged in 2011, Ahmed was charged in March 2014 with playing a role in terrorist attacks against the town of Bashiqa, in accordance with the ‘Kurdistan Region Anti-Terrorism Act’ – which enables security forces to take measures that enable them to combat threats to the Kurdistan Region, such as the current one posed by ISIS, more efficiently.
The KRG statement stresses that anyone arrested under this legislation still has their “innate human rights such as in arrest procedure and detainment.”
The statement went on to add that, “Mr. Ahmed is without a doubt one of the most volatile/dangerous terrorist elements and is a threat to the stability of the wider region.”
“For this reason,” the report concluded, “all necessary judicial processes must be seen through before Mr. Ahmed may be released from custody.”
