first political prisoners in 1986 and the prison’s liberation by Kurdish Peshmerga on March 9 1991, Sulaymaniyah’s Amna Suraka, or Red Prison, functioned as the headquarters of the northern division of the Mukhabarat, iraq’s secret intelligence agency. The Mukharbarat used the location for the state’s torture and imprisonment of Iraq’s Kurdish population.

Between 1986 and 1989, the Iraqi state conducted the al-Anfal Campaign, considered to be genocidal in intent, against the Iraqi Kurds. Conducted by Ali Hassan al-Majid under the direction of Saddam Hussein, al-Anfal utilized bombing, firing squads, mass deportation and forced relocation, ground offensives, settlement destruction, torture and imprisonment, and chemical warfare in an attempt to destroy the Kurdish population.

The chemical gas attacks on Halabja, part of al-Anfal, earned al-Majid the nickname of “Chemical Ali.” A Human Rights Watch report documents the “systematic and deliberate murder of at least 50,000 and possibly as many as 100,000 Kurds” as a result of al-Anfal. Thousands of Kurds were tortured and executed at Amna Suraka.

During the first Gulf War of 1991, the Kurdish guerilla army called the Peshmerga conducted an uprising in northern Iraq with the intent of liberating the country from Hussein’s control. Though ultimately unsuccessful, the uprising did see the capturing of  of the Amna Suraka by Kurds. Due in part to the efforts of Lady Hero Talabani, the wife of Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, Amna Suraka is now a national Museum of War Crimes.

Visitors of the Amna Suraka today may explore the multi-story administrative building. It has been left largely as it was the day of its capture by Peshmerga: structurally intact but gutted and studded with holes from warfare. The basement, lit with deep, dark red, contains haunting photographs from the chemical attack in Halabja. Among the images is Ramazan Öztürk’s iconic image Silent Witness. School children on class visits to the museum climb about the various disused tanks and helicopters which sit in the courtyard outside the administrative building.

The central building of the Museum of War Crimes opens with the Hall of Mirrors. What was once the offices and canteen of ranking members of the Ba’ath party is now a hall covered with 4,500 light bulbs representing villages destroyed during al-Anfal, and 182,000 shards of broken glass—for every person killed during the operation. The Hall of Mirrors also contains a replica of a traditional Kurdish home.