Amnesty International has learnt that sisters Iqbal and Amal Ibtissam, along with Amal Ibtissam’s baby daughter, were released without charge on 19 March. A total of 35 women, and their children, have reportedly been freed but an unknown number of women and children are said to remain held incommunicado in a makeshift detention centre, formerly a school, in an area called Hay al-Ansar in the city of Najaf, south of Baghdad. There is still no information about the conditions in which they are held.
