Over 2,200 ISIS detainees moved from Syria to Iraq in ongoing US operation

BAGHDAD — Iraq has so far received 2,225 Islamic State group detainees, whom the US military began transferring from Syria last month, an Iraqi official told AFP on Saturday.

They are among up to 7,000 ISIS detainees whose transfer from Syria to Iraq the US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced last month, in a move it said was aimed at “ensuring that the terrorists remain in secure detention facilities.”

Previously, they had been held in prisons and camps administered by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northeast Syria.

The announcement of the transfer plan in January came after US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack declared that the SDF’s role in confronting ISIS had come to an end.

Saad Maan, head of the security information cell attached to the Iraqi prime minister’s office, told AFP on Saturday that “Iraq has received 2,225 terrorists from the Syrian side by land and air, in coordination with the international coalition,” which Washington has led since 2014 to fight ISIS.

He said they are being held in “strict, regular detention centers.”

A Kurdish military source confirmed to AFP the “continued transfer of ISIS detainees from Syria to Iraq under the protection of the international coalition.”

On Saturday, an AFP photographer near the Kurdish-majority city of Qamishli in northeastern Syria saw a US military convoy and 11 buses with tinted windows.

ISIS seized swaths of northern and western Iraq starting in 2014, until Iraqi forces, backed by the international coalition, managed to defeat it in 2017.

Iraq is still recovering from the severe abuses committed by the jihadists, who established a regime characterized by mass death, sexual slavery of women and girls and punishment for any dissent.

In recent years, Iraqi courts have handed down hundreds of death sentences and life terms to people convicted of terrorism offenses, including hundreds of foreign fighters — some caught in Syria and transferred across the border. Thousands of Iraqis and foreign nationals convicted of membership in the terror group are incarcerated in Iraqi prisons.

On Monday, the Iraqi judiciary announced it had begun investigative procedures involving 1,387 detainees it received as part of the US military’s operation.

In a statement to the Iraqi News Agency on Saturday, Maan said, “The established principle is to try all those involved in crimes against Iraqis and those belonging to the terrorist ISIS organization before the competent Iraqi courts.”

Among the detainees being transferred to Iraq are Syrians, Iraqis, Europeans and holders of other nationalities, according to Iraqi security sources.

Iraq is calling on the concerned countries to repatriate their citizens and ensure their prosecution.

Maan noted that “the process of handing over the terrorists to their countries will begin once the legal requirements are completed.”