The political prisoner's salary in Iraq is not a fixed figure stated in Political Prisoners Foundation Law No. 4 of 2006, as amended. Article 17 ties entitlement to the person's status and to the length of imprisonment or detention, and then ties the amount to the minimum pension under the pension law in force. The useful questions are who is entitled, how long the salary continues, and when it passes to the family or is withdrawn.
Other privileges — land, study, public employment and treatment — are set out in Political prisoner entitlements. Combining this salary with another salary is explained in Combining entitlements.
Article 17 opens by stating that the political prisoner and the political detainee are compensated for the restriction of liberty and for lost earnings. It then sets out brackets:
Status itself — prisoner, detainee, or Rafha detainee — is first decided on the path explained in Who is covered and before the Special Committee.
Paragraph Fourteen of Article 17 requires the National Pension Authority (Hay’at al-Taqa‘ud al-Wataniyya) to pay the sums under that article. Coverage is decided at the Political Prisoners Foundation; periodic payment then runs through the National Pension Authority. The administrative phrase “pension batches” therefore refers to a payment cycle explained in Political prisoners’ pension batches. A batch does not create a right outside the coverage decision and the statute.
Those who fall under paragraphs First, Third and Seventh of Article 17 may combine this salary with any other functional or pension salary or pension share paid by the State, for twenty-five years from the date Law No. 4 of 2006 entered into force, and ten years for others (Article 17(10)(b)). After that period, the text provides a choice. Law No. 10 of 2025 added a rule for a covered employee whose combining period ends before retirement: on retirement the employee may choose between the retirement salary and a return to the salary under this law, from the date of the request and without retrospective effect. The detail is on the combining page.
Once a coverage decision is issued, the salary continues while the status remains and the rights have not been withdrawn. Article 6 addresses withdrawal of coverage in the cases the text sets out, including where the facts presented are disproved. Delay in administrative payment, by itself, does not cut off the right.
Paragraph (c) of clause 5 of Article 22, as amended by Law No. 10 of 2025, provides that the prescribed salary passes to the family of the covered person on death and is distributed equally among them. “Family” in Article 5 means the spouse, first-degree relatives, and the heirs according to the legal inheritance deed (qisam shar‘i) issued by the Personal Status Court, or the Personal Matters Court for non-Muslims.
The question “who is entitled to the salary of a deceased political prisoner?” is therefore answered from the coverage decision, from the statutory definition of the family, and from the inheritance deed — not from administrative lists or from a reading outside the text. If a beneficiary is a minor, the rules of guardianship or curatorship under Minors Care Law No. 78 of 1980 are observed.
The law does not set out a single table headed “cases of cessation”. What the text makes clear is:
A dispute about cessation or about transfer of the salary is read with the coverage decision, and with appealing a non-coverage decision if the real dispute is about coverage itself.
The text does not fix a standing figure. The amount is tied to the minimum pension under the law in force, and is multiplied or increased according to status and the length of imprisonment or detention.
On death it passes to the family and is shared equally. It is withdrawn if a legal ground for withdrawal is established. Delay in payment, or waiting for a pension batch, is not in itself a cessation of the right.
The family as defined in Article 5: the spouse, first-degree relatives, and the heirs under the legal inheritance deed, sharing equally.
The prescribed salary continues while coverage remains, subject to the twenty-five-year combining rule from the date the law entered into force, for those under paragraphs First, Third and Seventh of Article 17, and ten years for others (Article 17(10)(b)), and then to the choice rules in the text. There is no general published end-date beyond that.
Coverage is a decision of the Political Prisoners Foundation. Payment is made by the National Pension Authority under Article 17.
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