A French human rights organization has appealed for the return of 47 French citizens currently held in Iraqi prisons after being transferred from Syria, where they were initially detained on suspicion of links to the Islamic State group.
Matthieu Bagard, head of Lawyers Without Borders France (Avocats sans frontières France), said he met 13 of the detainees during a visit to Iraq earlier this week.
He returned to Paris on Wednesday following the trip.
Bagard told RFI that all of the men he interviewed reported severe detention conditions and alleged they had been subjected to torture.
“They are suffering from extraordinary deprivation,” he said.
“Some of them still have shrapnel in their bodies, some who were kidnapped, others who were not.”
He added that several detainees were experiencing deteriorating eyesight and had remained completely isolated from the outside world for years.
“They have had no news from the outside world since 2017 for the first group, and since 2019 for those who were arrested after the fall of Baghuz. This was the first time they were able to get information about their families, their children who had been repatriated to France.”
According to Bagard, Iraqi authorities are attempting to extract confessions that would link the detainees to Islamic State operations in Iraq, enabling their prosecution under Iraqi law. In 2019, eleven French nationals were tried in Iraqi courts.
Iraqi judicial authorities have issued hundreds of death sentences and life imprisonment rulings against individuals convicted of terrorism-related offences, including foreign nationals.
Bagard and fellow lawyer Marie Dosé said on Tuesday that the transfer of the French detainees from Syria to Iraq violated international law. They accused the French government of complicity and warned of what they described as an impending security crisis.
“We are completely outsourcing the judicial fate of these nationals,” Bagard said.
“We are passing the buck to the Iraqi authorities by saying: ‘It will be up to you to try them, and it will be up to you afterwards to keep them in your prisons for the duration of their sentences’. Whereas we could legally have them transferred to France.”
Other organizations have also urged France to repatriate the detainees. Arthur Dénouveaux, who heads an association representing victims of the 13 November Paris attacks, said the suspects should face trial in France.
Over the past week, around 7,000 individuals suspected of belonging to Islamic State have been transferred from Syria to Iraq as part of a US-backed plan to relocate detainees.
The group includes Iraqi nationals as well as Europeans, who have been placed in at least three different prisons across Iraq.
Iraq declared victory over Islamic State in 2017 with the support of a US-led coalition, while Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) later announced the group’s defeat in Syria in 2019.
Following that victory, the SDF detained thousands of suspected militants along with tens of thousands of their family members in camps across northeastern Syria.
Earlier this month, the United States said its alliance with Kurdish forces in Syria had largely run its course, as the Syrian government moved forward with an offensive to reclaim territory long controlled by the SDF.
Amnesty International has called on Washington to “urgently put in place safeguards before making any further transfers” and urged Iraq to conduct “fair trials, without recourse to the death penalty”.
