Iraq will begin legal proceedings against Islamic State prisoners transferred from Syria this week by the U.S. military, the Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council announced Thursday, beginning a process that could take years.
U.S. forces on Tuesday said they transferred 150 ISIS detainees from Syria after the rapid collapse of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in northeastern Syria sparked concerns that prisons in the area would not be secure.
Syrian prisons there, which were until recently overseen by the SDF, house thousands of former ISIS fighters, with U.S. forces expected to facilitate the transfer of up to 7,000 detainees to Iraq for prosecution.
Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council confirmed that all transferred detainees would be subject “exclusively to the authority of the Iraqi judiciary” and that senior ISIS terrorists would be held in high-security facilities.
The Kurdish-led SDF was the de facto government of northeastern Syria during most of the Syrian Civil War, with Arab and Kurdish elements preferring the SDF’s leadership to ISIS or the government of Bashar Assad.
During that period, the SDF also enjoyed broad intelligence and material support from the U.S. for its work in combating ISIS. At its height, the SDF controlled the Hasakah, Raqqa and Deir Ezzor provinces, which housed several large prison complexes, lucrative oil fields and valuable farmland.
The SDF’s forces are now concentrated in the Hasakah province after being pushed out of Raqqa and Deir Ezzor by Damascus this week after intense fighting. Under a new agreement with Damascus, the SDF has until Saturday to come up with a plan to integrate its forces into the Syrian military or face further attacks.
