BAGHDAD (AP) — The U.S. military has completed the transfer of thousands of Islamic State group detainees from Syria to Iraq, where they are expected to stand trial in the future, the U.S. Central Command said Friday.
CENTCOM said that the transfer that began on Jan. 21 saw U.S. forces transporting more than 5,700 adult male IS suspects from detention facilities in Syria to Iraqi custody.
The prisoners were transferred to Iraq at the request of Baghdad — a move welcomed by the U.S.-led coalition that had for years fought against IS.
“We appreciate Iraq’s leadership and recognition that transferring the detainees is essential to regional security,” said Adm. Brad Cooper, CENTCOM commander.
Iraq’s National Center for International Judicial Cooperation said a total of 5,704 suspects from 61 countries who were affiliated with IS were transferred from prisons in Syria.
The Center said most of the suspects were Syrian or Iraqi, though there were other foreign nationals from Europe as well as Australia, Canada and the United States, among other countries.
Over the past three weeks, the U.S. military escorted the detainees from prisons in northeastern Syria run by the U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, to Baghdad.
The transfers have helped calm fears that the recent rounds of fighting in Syria between government forces and the SDF would allow the IS prisoners to flee from detention camps there and join militant sleeper cells that are still carrying out attacks in both Iraq and Syria.
Iraq is looking to put on trial some of the thousands of the IS detainees who were held for years in Syria without charges or access to the judicial system.
When IS declared a caliphate — a self-proclaimed territory under a traditional form of Islamic rule — in large parts of Syria and Iraq that the militant group seized in 2014, it attracted extremists from around the world.
From the caliphate, the extremists plotted attacks around the world that left hundreds dead from Europe to Arab countries and Asia.
“The successful execution of this orderly and secure transfer operation will help prevent an ISIS resurgence in Syria,” said U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Kevin Lambert, commander of the Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve, that led the mission planning, coordination, and execution. He used an acronym to refer to the Islamic State group.
___
Mroue reported form Beirut.