“I think everything can and must be done in a peaceful way. I don’t even believe extremist Islamist fighters should be tortured,” he says. Jihangeer Hamad Ahmed, 49, was captured in 1985 in Shaqlawa for his involvement in rebel sleeper cells, and was released three years later in a general amnesty. He did not wish to discuss his time in prison, which pains him to this day. “Torture should not be condoned under any circumstances, whatever the nature of the crime, but especially if a man has been taken in for his ideas and beliefs,” he says. “To this day I suffer from the aftershocks of the torture I endured in prison.” Beyond the nightmares and mental anguish, members of the Political Prisoners Generation of Kurdistan share another grievance. “Nobody has done anything for us, except for the Kurdish regional government that pays the rent of our building,” says Abdulla. Ahmed concurs: “in the center and south of Iraq, former political prisoners receive monthly pensions, and they are given the opportunity to reclaim all that they lost, whether their jobs or their studies. They are also compensated for physical handicaps they suffer as a result … They are given mortgage loans of up to 30 million Iraqi dinars (XX.03 million), or provided flats to live in. But when it comes to our rights, the government is always dilly-dallying.”                

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