Forty-seven French citizens who had been held in detention in northeast Syria on suspicion of being members of the Islamic State (IS) group have been handed over to Iraq for prosecution, Iraqi security officials said.
Three Iraqi security officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly told The Associated Press (AP) on Thursday, September 18 that the French prisoners will be tried on terrorism charges in Iraq.
They had been held in one of a network of detention centers in northeast Syria housing some 9,000 accused IS members guarded by the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), before they were handed over to Iraq a month and a half ago, the officials said. Their transfer had not been previously reported. French officials could not be immediately reached for comment.
It's not the first time French citizens accused of being IS militants have been sent from Syria to Iraq for trial. In 2019, 13 suspected French militants were transferred to Iraq from Syria for trial. Thousands of Iraqi citizens detained in Syria have also been extradited for trial. In total, the Iraqi officials said, 3,192 inmates have been handed over to Iraq by the SDF, of whom 724 were sentenced to death and 1,381 to life imprisonment.
The question of the fate of the detention centers in northeast Syria – as well as that of the al-Hol and al-Roj camps that house tens of thousands of people with alleged ties to IS, most of them wives and children of militants – has loomed large since the fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a lightning rebel offensive in December.
Under a deal inked in March between the SDF and the new authorities in Damascus, the SDF is supposed to eventually turn over management of the camps and detention centers to Damascus, but progress on implementation has been slow.
The US military has been pushing for years for countries who have citizens in the camps and detention centers to repatriate them. On Wednesday, France announced that it had returned three French women and ten children who were in camps in northeastern Syria.