Baghdad – Iraqi officials confirmed that 47 French nationals accused of ties to the so-called Islamic State were transferred from Kurdish-led detention centres in northeast Syria to Iraq for trial.
Three senior Iraqi security officials told The Associated Press the transfer took place about six weeks ago from facilities run by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), with support from the U.S.-led coalition. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
The SDF currently holds around 9,000 suspected ISIS fighters in makeshift prisons across northern Syria, many of them foreign nationals detained during the collapse of the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate in 2019. The Kurdish authorities have repeatedly urged countries to repatriate their citizens, but most European governments remain reluctant.
This is not the first time French citizens have been handed over. In 2019, 13 French ISIS members were transferred to Baghdad, where Iraq has conducted rapid trials with sentences ranging from life imprisonment to death.
Also read: France Opens Trial of Three Women Accused of Joining ISIS
According to official Iraqi figures, authorities have received 3,192 detainees from the SDF in recent years. Of those, 724 were sentenced to death and 1,381 received life sentences, reflecting Baghdad’s hardline stance on ISIS-related crimes.
The transfer comes as Iraq continues to press for an international solution to the sprawling al-Hol camp in Syria, where tens of thousands of women and children linked to ISIS are housed in dire conditions. Iraqi diplomats say they plan to raise the issue later this month at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, calling it a “ticking time bomb” that threatens regional security.
