Walid Yunis Ahmad (born in Zakho

Zakho

Zakho is a district and a town in Northern Iraq located a few kilometers from the Iraqi-Turkish border.Zakho is a province of the Dohuk Governorate. The city has 200,000 inhabitants. It may have originally begun on a small island in the Little Khabur which currently flows through the city...

) is an Iraq

Iraq

Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

i television journalist who was detained without trial for 11 years after his arrest in Erbil

Erbil

Arbil may refer to:* Arbil, fourth largest city in Iraq* Arbil Governorate* Arbil International Airport...

, the capital city of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan

Iraqi Kurdistan

Iraqi Kurdistan or Kurdistan Region is an autonomous region of Iraq. It borders Iran to the east, Turkey to the north, Syria to the west and the rest of Iraq to the south. The regional capital is Arbil, known in Kurdish as Hewlêr...

, on 6 February 2000. In March 2011, he was sentenced to five more years in prison.

Background and arrest

Prior to his arrest, Walid Yunis Ahmad, who is ethnically Turkmen

Turkmen people

The Turkmen are a Turkic people located primarily in the Central Asian states of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and northeastern Iran. They speak the Turkmen language, which is classified as a part of the Western Oghuz branch of the Turkic languages family together with Turkish, Azerbaijani, Qashqai,...

, worked as a program organizer and translator for a radio and television station, reporting in Kurdish

Kurdish language

Kurdish is a dialect continuum spoken by the Kurds in western Asia. It is part of the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian group of Indo-European languages....

, Arabic and Turkmen

Turkmen language

Turkmen is the national language of Turkmenistan...

. Amnesty International

Amnesty International

Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...

 reported that the station may have been associated with the opposition party Islamic Movement of Kurdistan

Islamic Movement of Kurdistan

The Islamic Movement of Kurdistan is an Islamist group founded in 1979 by Shaykh Uthman Abd-Aziz and several other Sunni mullahs who were all part of the non-political "Union of Religious Scholars" . The party's main support comes from in and around that town of Halabjah...

.

Ahmad stated that on the day of his arrest, he took a ride in someone else's car after a meeting of the Islamic Movement when police promptly stopped and searched his acquaintance's vehicle. The officers stated that they found explosive material and arrested Ahmad on the spot. Ahmad was then detained for ten years without charge or trial; for the first three years, his family was unaware of his whereabouts. Ahmad's family reported after a visit in 2008 that they found him in poor health due to a recent hunger strike. Ahmad alleges that he was tortured during this period by security forces.

Charges and trial

According to the "secret informants", Walid Yunis Ahmad was linked to explosives that were discovered in Dohuk in 2009, despite having been in detention for nine years. In January 2011, formal charges were filed against him, and in March 2011, he was convicted. Amnesty International alleges that he did not receive a fair trial, and that the charges were fabricated to justify his lengthy detention. The organization has named him a "priority case" and urged his immediate release.