Hundreds of ISIS women continue their strike in an Iraqi prison… What are the risks?

At least 400 female members of the Islamic State (ISIS) are on their second week of hunger strike at al-Rusafa high-security prison in ‏Baghdad‎‎

The BBC said: The group taking part in the hunger strike includes foreign women from Russia, ‏Turkey, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Syria, France, Germany and the United States, noting that about 100 children are also held at the ‏‎ facility‎

The network published videos showing emaciated women lying motionless on hard stone floors, indicating ‏ the battered group had not eaten since April 24th‎

The ISIS women have been charged with belonging to the terrorist group but say they have been subjected to trials that they ‏called “unfair‎”.

The women are serving sentences ranging from 15 years to life in prison. Iraqi authorities sentenced ‏some to death, but no executions were carried out‎ ‎.

Speaking from inside the prison on a mobile phone, a Russian woman said she would not eat anything until she was released, adding that she ‏was sentenced to 15 years in prison, after a 10-minute trial‎‎

She said the confessions were written in Arabic, which she cannot read, and that the document stated she was ‏arrested in Mosul while carrying weapons‎‎

The women prisoners alleged that 40 women were being held in a cell and that they were often beaten and subjected to inhuman treatment‎‎

While some women have admitted to joining ISIS because of their own desire, and have often participated in ISIS crimes, others ‏ they were tricked or coerced into joining ISIS‎ ‎

Last April, the Iraqi Ministry of Justice announced the dismissal of the prison director after he ‏admitted that Al-Rasafa Prison had exceeded its capacity four times‎‎

After the fall of ISIS in Iraq in 2017, local authorities arrested tens of thousands of former members, ‏ some of them charged with execution, while women and children remained detained in Syrian and Iraqi prisons‎ ‎.

Despite mounting international demands to return ISIS families and children from detention centers in Syria and Iraq, the dossier has not received much attention on counterradicalization and terrorism agendas, turning these places into time bombs, which is feared to be factors attracting ISIS members to launch attacks to free their families from detention.