Iraqi Court Sentences Six French Men to Life in Prison for Islamic State Membership, a Seventh Gets 15 Years
An Iraqi court on Tuesday, October 27, sentenced six French nationals to life in prison and a seventh to 15 years after convicting them of membership in Islamic State, according to a Reuters witness inside the courtroom. The presiding judge said the sentences were imposed under Iraq's counterterrorism law for joining Islamic State and spreading fear, and that the court had opted for life imprisonment rather than the death penalty because the defendants were young. The seventh French national, aged 23, received the 15-year sentence.
The men were among 47 French Islamic State suspects transferred from detention facilities in northeast Syria to Iraq last year under a broader relocation arrangement coordinated by US forces and Iraqi authorities. Iraq opened the trial of the French nationals last month. Abbas al-Maliki, one of the lawyers for the defendants, said the group would appeal the sentences in the Court of Cassation.
Islamic State seized large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014 before being driven from its self-declared caliphate by a US-led coalition and local forces in 2019. Many of the group's militants were detained, although remnants of the organization continue to operate. The United States announced in January that it had begun transferring Islamic State detainees from Syria to Iraq amid concerns about the security of detention facilities in northeast Syria after Kurdish-led forces lost control of parts of the region.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 底格里斯河流经伊拉克首都巴格达（资料图）。美国海军二等士官 Dominique A. Pineiro 摄，美国国防部，公共领域，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / The Tigris River flows through Baghdad, Iraq (file photo). Photo by Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Dominique A. Pineiro, U.S. Department of Defense, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
