BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq said Sunday that under a U.S.-brokered deal, Baghdad will prosecute and try Islamic State group militants who are being transferred to Iraq from prisons and detention camps in neighboring Syria.
The announcement by Iraq’s top judicial body followed a meeting of senior security and political officials to discuss the ongoing transfer of some 9,000 Islamic State detainees held in Syria since the militant group’s collapse there in 2019.
They needed to be relocated last month after Syria’s nascent government forces pushed back Syrian Kurdish-led militants – once a top U.S. ally in the fight against the Islamic State – from areas of northeastern Syria they had controlled for years and from an Islamic State prisoner camp they had been guarding.
Syrian forces have seized the sprawling Al Hol camp, which houses thousands of people, mostly families of Islamic State fighters, from Kurdish-led forces. Troops also took control of a prison in the northeastern town of Shadad last Monday, from which some Islamic State detainees escaped during fighting. Syrian state media later reported that many had been recaptured.
Now, clashes between the Syrian army and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have raised concerns about IS activating sleeper cells in these areas and the escape of IS detainees. The Syrian government said it would hold Islamic State prisoners accountable under a preliminary deal with the Kurds.
Baghdad is particularly concerned that fleeing Islamic State detainees could regroup and threaten Iraq’s security and its side of its vast Syrian-Iraqi border.
Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said that once in Iraq, “Islamic State” prisoners accused of terrorism crimes will be investigated by security forces and tried in domestic courts.
The U.S. military launched the transfer process on Friday with the transfer of the first batch of Islamic State prisoners from Syria to Iraq. Two Iraqi security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity under regulations, told The Associated Press that 125 more Islamic State prisoners were transferred on Sunday.
So far, 275 prisoners have arrived in Iraq, a process officials say has been slow because U.S. forces have been transporting them by air.
Damascus and Washington both welcomed Baghdad’s proposal to transfer prisoners to Iraq.
The Iraqi parliament will meet later on Sunday to discuss current developments in Syria, where Iraqi government forces are strengthening their presence on the border.
Fighting between the Syrian government and the SDF has largely ceased with the recently extended ceasefire. According to the Syrian Defense Ministry, the extension of the truce is to support the ongoing transfer of US troops.
The Islamic State was defeated in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria two years later, but Islamic State sleeper cells continue to carry out deadly attacks in both countries. As a key U.S. ally in the region, the SDF played an important role in defeating the Islamic State.
In the fight against ISIS, thousands of extremists and tens of thousands of women and children associated with them have been captured and held in prisons and Al Hol camp. The sprawling Al Hol camp houses thousands of women and children.
Last year, the US military and its partner SDF fighters detained more than 300 “Islamic State” militants in Syria and killed more than 20 people. In December last year, “Islamic State” militants ambushed two American soldiers and an American civilian translator in Syria.
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Chehayeb reported from Beirut.
