BAGHDAD (AP) — France said Monday the Iraqi court that sentenced three French citizens to death for being members of the Islamic State group has jurisdiction to rule in the case, a statement that came as questions swirl about the legal treatment of thousands of foreign nationals formerly with the extremist group.
IS "terrorists must answer for their crimes in court," said France's foreign affair's ministry spokeswoman, Agnès von der Mühll.
The three, sentenced Sunday, were the first French IS members to receive death sentences in Iraq, where they were transferred for trial from neighboring Syria.
Another group of French IS members was expected to be sentenced by the court in Baghdad later Monday.
As Monday's proceedings opened, the first Frenchman to appear was Mustafa Mohammed Ibrahim, 37, from the Mediterranean city of Nice.
Ibrahim, of Tunisian origin, with short hair and a light beard, walked in the courtroom wearing a yellow uniform with "reforms department" printed on the back in Arabic
"I ask for forgiveness from the people of Iraq and Syria and the victims," the man said before the judge ordered he remove his top in order to see if there were any signs of torture on his body. None were visible.
"No matter what the sentence will be against me I want to go back to my country," said Ibrahim. He added that he used to work as a driver back in France before joining IS.
The second man brought into the courtroom was identified as Fadil Hamad Abdallah, 33, of Moroccan origin.
The French citizens on trial in Iraq are among 12 French IS fighters whom the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces handed over to Iraq in January. The Kurdish-led group spearheads the fight against IS in Syria and has handed over to Iraq hundreds of suspected IS members in recent months.
In Paris, von der Mühll said France's position is that adults detained in Iraq must be tried by the Iraqi justice system, as soon as it declares itself competent.
"France respects the sovereignty of Iraqi authorities" she added, though she expressed her country's opposition to the death penalty, "in principle, at all times and in all places."
Source: The Associated Press, Staff, May 27, 2019
Paris will take "necessary steps" to try to prevent Iraq from carrying out executions of French nationals
France says it will take steps to urge Iraq not to carry out the death penalty for three nationals convicted of joining ISIS but said it accepts Baghdad’s sovereignty.
The French Foreign Ministry said it was opposed in principle to the death penalty at all times and in all places.
“The French embassy in Iraq, in its role as provider of consular protection, is taking the necessary steps to convey its position [against the death penalty] to the Iraq authorities,” the ministry said in a statement.
The statement said France respects the sovereignty of the Iraqi authorities and added that ISIS members “had to answer for their crimes”, which carry the death penalty in Iraq.
The death penalty was abolished in France in 1981 and French law forbids the government extraditing someone who could face the death penalty for their crimes without specific guarantees that the sentence will not be handed down.
Thousands of foreign and national fighters are currently in Iraqi custody and more than 500-suspected members have been tried since the start of 2018.
Iraqi courts have sentenced many to life in prison and others to death but no foreign ISIS members have yet been executed.
The men, Kevin Gonot, Leonard Lopez and Salim Machou, are believed to be first French citizens to receive the sentence. They were handed to Iraqi authorities’ by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces earlier this year.
They were among 13 French nations caught in Syria who were transferred to Iraq last February. One was released after Iraqi authorities found no evidence he had fought with a militant group and said he had entered Syria “legally” to help the Yazidi community kidnapped by ISIS.
The three men have 30 days to appeal their sentence.
France is expected to offer consular services to any of its nationals who are jailed in a foreign country.
The men were tried in specialist courts set up to deal with terrorism charges.
They have been used to prosecute thousands of suspected members of ISIS or sympathisers since 2014, the year ISIS captured a third of Iraq.
Authorities in France had long said that those who commit terrorism crime abroad should be tried in the territories in which the offences took place.
Source: The National, Staff, May 27, 2019
Iraqi Court Sentences Three French Members of ISIS to Death
They were the first French IS members to receive death sentences in Iraq, where they were transferred for trial from neighboring Syria.
Baghdad: A Baghdad court on Sunday sentenced three French citizens to death for being members of the Islamic State group, an Iraqi judicial official said.
They were the first French IS members to receive death sentences in Iraq, where they were transferred for trial from neighboring Syria.
The verdict raised new questions about the legal treatment of thousands of foreign nationals formerly with the extremist group.
Many now languish in prisons in Iraq or detention camps in northern Syria. Their home countries hesitate to take back citizens they see as having gone willingly to join the militant group.
The official said the three were among 12 French citizens whom the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces handed over to Iraq in January.
The Kurdish-led group spearheads the fight against IS in Syria and has handed over to Iraq hundreds of suspected IS members in recent months.
The convicted French militants can appeal the sentences within a month, according to the official, who official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorised to speak to the media.
Iraqi President Barham Saleh had said during a February visit to Paris that the 12 will be prosecuted in accordance with Iraqi laws.
In March, Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi asserted Iraq's authority to try foreign IS suspects detained in Syria because "the battlefields were one."
The trials of the French nationals in Baghdad raise the difficult question of whether foreign IS suspects should be tried and punished in the country of their alleged crimes, even when there are serious doubts about the impartiality of the courts in Iraq and Syria.
Human rights groups including Human Rights Watch have criticized Iraq's handling of IS trials, accusing authorities of relying on circumstantial evidence and often extracting confessions under torture.
The thousands of men and women who came from around the world to join the self-styled Islamic caliphate have been left in limbo following the group's territorial defeat earlier this year in Syria.
The three men are the first French IS members to receive death sentences in Iraq. It wasn't immediately clear how France, which abolished the death penalty nearly four decades ago, will react to the sentence.
The trials are a test for how the international community handles the thousands of foreign nationals who stayed, or were trapped, with the Islamic State group through its dying days.
Iraqi prosecutors say the 12 French nationals are accused of belonging to IS, were parties or accomplices to its crimes, and threatened the national security of Iraq. Simply belonging to the extremist group is punishable by life in prison or execution under Iraq's counter-terrorism laws.
Judge Ali Hassan Jaafar, who presided over a closed-door court hearing, on May 2, to review the evidence that will be admitted to the trials, said the evidence showed all twelve men had crossed illegally into Iraq, when IS controlled part of the border between Syria and Iraq, and all twelve had committed crimes in the country.
But even if they were never present in the country, they could still be tried in Iraq under the country's wide-reaching counter-terrorism laws, he said.
In an interview with The Associated Press earlier this month, Judge Jaafar said the evidence against the 12 men included their personal testimonies, the fact that they were caught with IS in Syria, three propaganda videos or audio clippings published by the group, and IS documents recovered in Iraq by Iraq's security forces.
"The first piece of evidence against them is that they were found with IS, in Syria, in the last days of the organization's existence," said the judge. "What else could they have been doing there?"
A French diplomatic official, speaking to the AP earlier this month on condition of anonymity to speak freely about policy, said France recognizes the right of Iraq to try people for crimes committed in Iraq.
But human rights groups and advocates of the men in France say it is not certain that the men committed crimes in Iraq, or if they were even ever in the country. They also doubt the impartiality of the courts, which have handed down hundreds of death sentences to Iraqi suspects in trials that run for just a few minutes.
"There's zero presumption of innocence when they walk into the courtroom," said Belkis Wille, the senior Iraq researcher at Human Rights Watch.
The U.N. envoy for Iraq, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, said member states bear primary responsibility for their own nationals, including the treatment of their citizens in accordance with international law.
"Normatively, one would expect and hope that individual states take back their nationals to process, prosecute, and deradicalize them," she said, in response to a query from AP. She said the U.N.'s human rights office regularly attends trials as part of its broader trial monitoring program but does not comment publicly on individual cases.
Iraq has detained or imprisoned at least 19,000 people accused of connections to IS or other terror-related offenses, and sentenced more than 3,000 of them to death, according to an analysis by the AP last year.
Source: The Associated Press, Staff, May 27, 2019
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
