Syria hands over 50 ISIS suspects to Iraq

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iraq has received 50 nationals suspected of being Islamic State (ISIS) members from Syria, Iraq's Security Media Cell said on Saturday.

The cell says the handover took place at the Rabia border crossing in coordination with Iraq's Joint Operations Command.

ISIS controlled swathes of Iraqi and Syrian land in 2014 but it was declared territorially defeated in 2017 and 2019 respectively. However, the group still poses a threat to both countries through hit and run attacks, kidnappings, and other tactics. Operations on both sides of the border continue to be held to eliminate the group.

Counterterrorism forces in Hasaka province in northeast Syria captured a suspected member of the group accused of planning a rocket attack against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and anti-ISIS global coalition on Thursday, while two suspected members of the group who were in charge of managing the militant group’s funds were arrested in southern Kirkuk on Tuesday.

The SDF arrested thousands of ISIS fighters and their wives and children when they took control of the group’s last stronghold in Syria in March 2019.

Most are being kept at al-Hol camp in north-eastern Syria, which officials have referred to as a ticking time bomb. It is populated by more than 60,000 people - mostly women and children of different nationalities.

ISIS sleeper cells are active in the camp and multiple deaths have been reported over the past months. Many Iraqi nationals have also been returned to Iraq from the camp, despite Iraq being one of the world’s top executioners, according to Amnesty International.

Since the rise of ISIS in 2014, thousands of people have been detained across Iraq for suspected links to terrorist groups, including ISIS, while hundreds have been executed. At least 17 people sentenced to death for terror charge were executed in 2020, reported AFP while Amnesty recorded 100 executions in Iraq in 2019, a number that dropped to 45 in the following year.

Raz Salayi, a researcher at Amnesty, told Rudaw English early in December that executions do not bring justice to those who suffered from ISIS' atrocities.

“Iraq’s continuous use of the death penalty despite serious failings in its fair trial proceedings - including the wide use of torture to get “confessions” - is one of the largest obstacles in moving past the legacy of the recent conflict. Executions bring no tangible justice to the victims of IS crimes,” she said.

In January 2021, an official from Iraq's presidency told AFP more than 340 execution orders "for terrorism or criminal acts" were ready to be carried out.

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