U.S. military says transfer of ISIS suspects from Syria to Iraq complete

The U.S. military said Friday that it had finished moving thousands of ISIS suspects from prisons and jails in Syria to facilities across the border in neighboring Iraq, completing a mission sparked by security concerns amid lingering unrest in post-war Syria that saw a mass-escape from one facility in late January.

“Central Command (CENTCOM) completed a transfer mission following a nighttime flight from northeastern Syria to Iraq on Feb. 12 to help ensure ISIS detainees remain secure in detention facilities,” the U.S. military command responsible for operations in the Middle East said in a statement, adding that the 23-day operation, “resulted in U.S. forces successfully transporting more than 5,700 adult male ISIS fighters from detention facilities in Syria to Iraqi custody.”

“Job well done to the entire Joint Force team who executed this exceptionally challenging mission on the ground and in the air with great focus, professionalism, and collaboration with our regional partners,” CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper said in the statement. “We appreciate Iraq’s leadership and recognition that transferring the detainees is essential to regional security.”

“The successful execution of this orderly and secure transfer operation will help prevent an ISIS resurgence in Syria,” added U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Kevin Lambert, commander of the U.S.-led military coalition in the region tasked with the ongoing fight against ISIS remnants.

It’s not clear if any of the prisoners have been charged with specific crimes, or even been confirmed as ISIS members. So, the decision by the U.S. to move them to Iraq — which has offered to put the detainees on trial — has drawn concern from rights groups citing a history in the country of “totally sham trials.”

The concern, as voiced to CBS News by Sarah Sanbar, a researcher with the New York-based Human Rights Watch, is that many of the detainees could face terrorism charges in an opaque justice system that, just seven years ago, saw alleged ISIS militants, including European nationals, convicted and sentenced to death.

She said the last time such a large number of people were put before courts in Iraq, the “system was completely overwhelmed.”

After Iraq defeated local elements of ISIS at the end of 2017, it put thousands of suspected members of the group on trial. According to the United Nations mission in Iraq, between January 2018 and October 2019, the Iraqi judiciary processed more than 20,000 terrorism-related cases. 

Iraqi officials never released details on how many people convicted in these cases were sentenced to death during that period, but Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have said around 8,000 people remain on death row in the country, including non-Iraqi citizens.

Several news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, reported in 2019 that seven French nationals were among the hundreds of people sentenced to death.

“They were totally sham trials,” Sanbar told CBS News earlier this month. “Confessions obtained under torture, people being tortured in detention centers, trials that lasted 10 minutes without a lawyer present, where they were sentenced to death, on the basis of an anonymous informant and no corroborating evidence.”

Responding to questions emailed by CBS News, an official with the Iraqi National Center of Justice and International Judicial Collaboration, rejected the accusations, saying the “Iraqi judiciary categorically rejects torture” and noting that “extracting confessions through coercion is a crime punishable under Iraqi law.”

“Terrorism trials in Iraq are conducted in accordance with current laws and within a constitutional framework that guarantees the right to a fair trial, the defendant’s right to a defense, and the eligibility of rulings for legal appeal,” the official said, adding that all such proceedings were “overseen by specialized judges working under extraordinary circumstances imposed by the scale and nature of these crimes.”

Iraq’s judiciary announced on Feb. 2 that it had begun investigations into more than 1,300 ISIS suspects among those who had been transferred from Syria by the U.S.

Sanbar, of Human Rights Watch, said Iraq’s justice system had “come a long way” since the 2019 trials, as the country itself has continued to stabilize, “but that being said, a lot of those core systemic issues still persist.”

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed the plan to transfer the prisoners months ago, saying they would “be in Iraq temporarily,” and urging the detainees’ home countries to repatriate their nationals. 

But Iraq’s top legal official, the President of the Supreme Judicial Council, Judge Dr. Faiq Zidan, said in a televised address on Jan. 23 that his country was fully prepared to handle the cases of ISIS suspects, foreign and domestic.

“While some countries refuse to receive their nationals involved in terrorist crimes, the Iraqi judiciary confirms its full readiness to try terrorists detained in camps within Syrian territory, in accordance with national laws and international obligations, ensuring fair and decisive trials, achieving justice for the victims of terrorism, and preserving security in Iraq and other countries,” he said.

“We don’t know who is there,” Sanbar told CBS News of the detainees, who have now been moved to Iraq by the U.S. “Part of what we would call on authorities to do in Iraq, and the coalition, is to be very clear about who they’re transferring, inform the families, give them access to legal representation, so that first and foremost, we know who’s even there.”

During a 2019 visit to a prison housing ISIS suspects in Hasaka, northeast Syria, CBS News found mostly Iraqi and Syrian inmates, but there were also many Europeans, Asians, Turks and citizens of other Arab countries. There was also one American man, but CBS News learned later that he had been repatriated.

So far, no third country has commented on the transfer of any foreign nationals to Iraq or the possibility of them being put on trial in the country. That came as no surprise to Sanbar.

“We’ve seen these countries whose citizens left to join ISIS completely washing their hands of any sort of responsibility. They’ve let them languish there for the last 10 years,” said Sanbar. “We would hope that now they would take them home, and we call on them to do so.”

The Iraqi National Center of Justice and International Judicial Collaboration told CBS News in early February that it was in communication with multiple countries regarding the matter, though it did not identify them.

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