An Iraqi court on Tuesday, 27 October, sentenced six French nationals to life in prison and a seventh to 15 years after convicting them of membership in Islamic State, a Reuters witness inside the courtroom said.

Source: Reuters via Northland News Radio

The men were among 47 French Islamic State suspects transferred from detention facilities in northeast Syria to Iraq last year under a broader relocation arrangement coordinated by US forces and Iraqi authorities, Reuters reported. Asharq Al-Awsat, cited by AzerNews, said the six men given life sentences are French citizens of Algerian origin and that the seven were part of the first group of 47 French citizens transferred from Syria to Iraq in 2025.

Source: Asharq Al-Awsat via AzerNews

The presiding judge said the sentences were imposed under Iraq's counterterrorism law for joining Islamic State and spreading fear, and that the court had opted for life imprisonment rather than the death penalty because the defendants were young, Reuters reported. The seventh French national, aged 23, was given the 15-year sentence.

Abbas al-Maliki, one of the lawyers for the defendants, said the group would appeal the sentence in the Court of Cassation, Reuters reported. Iraq opened the trial of the French nationals last month.

Islamic State seized large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014 before being driven from its self-declared caliphate by a US-led coalition and local forces in 2019. The United States announced in January that it had begun transferring Islamic State detainees from Syria to Iraq amid concerns about the security of detention facilities in northeast Syria after Kurdish-led forces lost control of parts of the region, Reuters reported. Asharq Al-Awsat reported that Iraq's Supreme Judicial Council said preliminary investigations into the transferred suspects had been completed and their cases were moving to the next stage of judicial proceedings.

Source: Asharq Al-Awsat via AzerNews