ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - An Erbil court on Tuesday sentenced jailed journalist Sherwan Sherwani to an additional four and a half years in prison for allegedly threatening an officer, his lawyer said.
Mohammed Abdullah, one of Sherwani’s lawyers, told reporters on Tuesday that “the court session was based on a complaint by someone named Major Dldar under Article 229 of the Iraqi Penal Code" which pertains to the crime of insulting a public servant or body during their official duties.
An Erbil court handed down the sentence for allegedly threatening the police officer, according to the lawyer who claimed that there had been “interference” in the court ruling.
He called for the ruling to be overturned and said they will appeal it.
Sherwani was arrested alongside a group of other journalists and activists in October 2020 for his involvement in protests over unpaid wages by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). They were called the Badinan detainees because they came from the Badinan area in Duhok province. He and four others were sentenced to six years behind bars in February 2021 on charges of “endangering national security.”
His sentence was reduced by half in February 2022 by a decree from Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani but he was given four more years in prison by an Erbil court in July 2023 on charges of faking a legal document.
In March, a judge refused his conditional release and decided to keep him behind bars for six additional months. The new term was handed down just two months before his scheduled release.
The trials and prison sentences of the Badinan prisoners drew outcry from diplomats, media watchdogs, and human rights groups who highlighted flaws in the legal system and accused Kurdish authorities of cracking down on dissent - charges the KRG has denied.
Ali Hama Saleh, leader of the opposition National Stance Movement (Halwest), also spoke at a press conference following Tuesday’s ruling.
"The charge is that Sherwan Sherwani allegedly threatened an officer in prison. The prison is full of cameras, and if this is true, let them release one video clip that proves Sherwan made threats or fought,” he said.
The Community Peacemaker Teams (CPT), a US-based human rights organization monitoring the cases of Badinan prisoners, said in a statement that their representative was present at the trial.
“The complainant claimed to have two witnesses who were allegedly present when Sherwan made the threat. Sherwan denied making any threats or that there were any witnesses to such an incident, so he requested video evidence for this incident. Under the pretext that on that day, the surveillance cameras did not record videos, no video was presented as evidence to the court,” said the CPT.
It added that some social media posts were presented as evidence that Sherwani had defamed the complainant, “but the videos were posted in 2022 and 2023 while Sherwan Sherwani was in prison, and no prisoner is allowed to use social media.”
The Sulaimani-based Metro Center for Journalists Right and Advocacy called on the ruling to be overturned.
"The Metro Center announces that from the beginning of the trial of Sherwan Sherwani and his colleagues, the conditions for a fair trial were not followed and it was not free from political interference. The aim of this process is to silence dissenting voices. We call on the appeals court to overturn the decision," it said.
