BAGHDAD
\nSix French nationals are due to stand trial in Iraq on Sunday, as the country assumes responsibility for prosecuting thousands of suspected Daesh group members. Iraq\u2019s prisons, already packed with Daesh suspects, have received thousands more detainees transferred since last year from neighboring Syria.
\nAn Iraqi judicial source told media on Thursday that six French nationals were scheduled to stand trial on Sunday. Their identities remain unclear, but they are part of a group of 47 French citizens transferred from Syria last year.
\nThe larger group includes Adrien Guihal, who claimed responsibility for the 2016 Nice attack for Daesh. The jihadist group swept across Syria and Iraq in 2014, committing massacres and forcing women and girls into sexual slavery.
\nIraq, backed by US-led forces, proclaimed victory over Daesh in 2017, and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces ultimately defeated the group in Syria two years later. Iraq is nonetheless still reckoning with the legacy left behind by the group, with mass graves and testimonies of Daesh brutality yet to be investigated.
\nFor years, its courts have handed down hundreds of execution orders and life sentences to those convicted of terrorism offenses, including foreign fighters. In 2019, 11 French nationals received death sentences that were later commuted to life in prison.
\nSome human rights groups have denounced terrorism trials in Iraq as rushed and lacking due process. In France, which has been the target of repeated jihadist attacks, repatriation of Daesh suspects and their family members has been a contentious issue. French lawyers on Thursday urged the repatriation of the French nationals detained in Iraq, warning that they could face the death penalty.
\nIn February, over 5,700 Daesh detainees from more than 60 countries were transferred to Iraq by the United States, after years held in Syrian prisons overseen by Kurdish-led forces. Among them were at least five French nationals, some of whom were minors when their parents joined Daesh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BAGHDAD Six French nationals are due to stand trial in Iraq on Sunday, as the country assumes responsibility for prosecuting thousands of suspected Daesh group members. Iraq\u2019s prisons, already packed with Daesh suspects, have received thousands more detainees transferred since last year from neighboring Syria. An Iraqi judicial source told media on Thursday that six …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":103229,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103245"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103258,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103245\/revisions\/103258"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}