“I was just a little girl when I lost my father, my mother, and my infant brother in Nugra Salman prison,” recalls survivor Fazila Hussein reported by Sabah Newspaper.

We survived by eating scraps of waste. With our bare hands, we buried children near the prison fences. We were raped daily and humiliated constantly

Her harrowing testimony sheds light on one of the darkest chapters of Kurdish history, when thousands of Kurds endured unimaginable suffering in the late 1980s.

Charges Against Former Officer

After her eventual release under a general amnesty, Fazila became the first to press charges against former prison officer Ajaj Ahmed Hardan al-Obeidy, widely known by his nickname “al-Hajjaj.”

In a rare admission, Ajaj acknowledged that he oversaw campaigns of starvation and sexual violence inside Nugra Salman, calling them deliberate “tools of extermination.”

Starvation as a Weapon

When assigned to the prison in 1989, Ajaj transferred 400 Arab detainees to other provinces and brought more than 3,000 Kurdish prisoners from Sulaymaniyah and Erbil.

We used starvation as a weapon of war, no less deadly than airstrikes

Ajaj confessed, acknowledging that nearly one-third of inmates died within just ten months.