According to Rasool, the Political Prisoners Generation of Kurdistan offers counseling for those former inmates who underwent grueling psychological  physical torture. They have centers in Erbil, Sulaimaniyah, Dohuk, Kirkuk and Mosul. Suleiman Khalid Ashgayi, president of the organization, is working to garner more support from human rights groups operating in Iraq. “We have so many handicapped and mentally disturbed people because of the abuse they suffered in prison. We hope those organizations will help us solve these problems,” he says. “Our organization was set up before our counterparts in Baghdad, but as they are affiliated with the government, they receive a great deal more assistance. Ours is a private grouping made up of volunteers.” Ashgayi also points out that a law passed in February 2008 entitles all former political prisoners to 800,000 Iraqi dinars ($700) with an additional 100,000 Iraqi dinars for each year spent in prison. But this has yet to apply to the members of the Political Prisoners Generation of Kurdistan in Erbil. According to Ashgayi, 12 percent of the organization’s members are women, some of whom were only released in 2003. “Former prisoners in 15 areas of Iraq are benefiting from this stipend, but not those in the Kurdistan Region,” he laments.  Ashgayi, 55, was captured in 1987 and detained for a little over a year at the Balda Security Office in Erbil, due to his father’s activities in the Kurdish resistance. “When a man went to take up arms in the mountains they would come to take his wife or children. Sometimes, even if your in-laws were Peshmergas (Kurdish fighters), they would still take you,” he said. A grisly past. The Balda Security Office in Erbil has now been converted into a base for the Kurdish security apparatus, Asaish. But for those who suffered unspeakable pain within those walls, the makeover does not eliminate the building’s grisly past.

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