Death Penalty News

On a busy day, Judge Ahmed might send several men to their deaths before lunchtime.  At the Baghdad court where he works, he has presided over more than a thousand trials of suspected Isis members.  Prisoners accused of belonging to one of the world’s most brutal terror organisations shuffle through the hallways wearing bright orange jumpsuits. They wait silently outside his courtroom and listen to those who go before them. The judge, who declined to give his name for security reasons, has seen before him unrepentant radicals and hardened killers, liars and psychopaths. He has also heard from defendants who say they joined the group just to survive.  He has seen young men from Europe, who travelled thousands of miles to join the jihadi group at the height of its power and survived long enough to see its fall. And for some time now, he has been readying himself to deal with the small number of British prisoners currently held in Syria, whose fate has bee...

France has a plan for dealing with European Islamic State fighters: get Iraq to handle them. While competing political train wrecks dominate the headlines in the U.S. and the U.K., the French foreign minister recently took a trip to Baghdad in an attempt to warehouse European jihadis, particularly French ones, far away from the continent. Nowhere in Western Europe is the security threat of the United States’s Syria withdrawal more pronounced than in France. The vulnerability to escape and jailbreak of the makeshift Kurdish prisons holding alleged Islamic State members has the fate of 200 French adults (60 of whom are feared jihadis) and 300 French children in question. Around 1,900 French nationals have traveled to join the Islamic State in Syria— more than double the number from any of its Western European peers. France has also been uniquely affected by foreign fighter violence. On a Friday night in Paris almost four years ago, French and Belgian nationals (many of whom ha...

Belgian fighter captured in Syria was transported to Iraq to face trial. He's now on death row. There was no other way out. After months under siege in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the Belgian Islamic State member Bilal al-Marchohi decided to escape. He fled his post as a religious police officer at the break of dawn on August 29, 2017, and ran with his wife and son to the closest enemy checkpoint. With his arms up, he handed himself over to the Kurdish militants in the hope of eventually being repatriated to Belgium. The family was immediately separated, and his spouse and child were transferred to a nearby Islamic State relatives camp. Along with other jihadi comrades, al-Marchohi was driven to a prison near the city of Tabqa, where he was interrogated by U.S. officials on his role in the organization, his closest companions, and on weaponry manufacturing. The 23-year-old jihadi told them he used to attend the Friday prayers at De Koepel mosque in Antwerp, whose imam, You...

The Muslim convert dubbed Jihadi Jack who fled the UK to join Islamic State has been stripped of his British citizenship, according to reports.  Jack Letts was 18 when he left his Oxfordshire home in 2014 and travelled to Syria to fight with the terror group. He was captured by the Kurdish YPG forces as he attempted to flee to Turkey in May 2017 and is now being held in jail in northern Syria.  In one of the last moves by Theresa May’s government, Jack is said to have had his British citizenship revoked. It is legally permissible because he has dual Canadian citizenship through his father, although the move is likely to provoke a diplomatic row with Canada. A Home Office spokesman told the Mail on Sunday: ‘Decisions on depriving a dual national of citizenship are based on substantial advice from officials, lawyers and the intelligence agencies and all available information. ‘This power is one way we can counter the terrorist threat posed by some of the most dang...

The French government is pushing back on criticism from a U.N. human rights expert over the fact French citizens who joined ISIS are standing trial in Iraq, a country with a death penalty. Agnès Callamard, the U.N. “special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions,” urged Paris this week to repatriate seven French jihadists who have been sentenced to death in Iraq. Public opinion in France remains opposed to the repatriation of French jihadists. ISIS has carried out several deadly attacks in France, including those in late 2015, when terrorists killed 130 people over 3 hours at a concert hall, sports stadium and restaurants in the French capital. Callamard, who met with the jihadists in prison, sent a letter to the French government criticizing the suspects’ transfer early this year from Syria – where they had been held by Kurdish forces – to Iraq. ➤ FIND related content here “France and the [anti-ISIS] coalition organized and sponsored this,”...

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – France’s foreign ministry has denied complicity in the “illegal transfer” of its nationals suspected of fighting for the Islamic State (ISIS) from Syria to Iraq in February, dismissing claims made by a United Nations special rapporteur as “pure speculation.” The UN rapporteur’s allegations “are not based on any previous exchange with the French authorities,” are "in no way backed up (and) are pure speculation,” the ministry said in a statement. Agnes Callamard, an expert on extrajudicial executions, expressed “serious concerns” in a Tuesday statement over the fate of seven French nationals who were arrested by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and subsequently transferred to Iraq in February. The transfer was made at the request of the French government, or with its suspected involvement, Callamard alleges, knowing that they could face torture, unfair trials and the death penalty in Iraq. "The involvement of France seems credible,...