Lawpod

This episode introduces the accountability project ISIS Prisons Museum. In her conversation, Dagmar Hovestädt explores the origins and methodology of this long-term investigation with its co-director Amr Khito and web developer Alan Woo. The team behind the ISIS Prisons Museum, for short IPM, documents former prison sites and mass graves of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and turns them into 3D tours and online investigations for families, researchers, and prosecutors.  Prisons were a central instrument of ISIS rule. Ordinary schools, churches, houses or even a stadium were turned into detention sites, and the IPM revealed systematic patterns of repression and crimes by documenting and analyzing more than 100 such places. The investigations combine spatial documentation and 3D modeling of former prison sites with left-behind administrative documents and hundreds of witness testimonies of former detainees.   The project is rooted in Syrian journalists’ and ex-prisoners’ own experiences; trust come