fourteen French jihadists must be tried in France, demand lawyers and victims’ groups

Fourteen French jihadists, men and women, detained for several years in Iraq after the fall of the Islamic State group, must be transferred to France to “answer” of their actions before the courts, their lawyers and victim groups asked on Tuesday.

“These men and women were born, grew up and were radicalized in France, before joining a terrorist organization which itself instigated attacks perpetrated in France. It is therefore on French soil that they must answer criminally for their responsibilities.urged in a column published in The World lawyers for these French people detained in Iraq or victims of terrorism as well as a group of victims of the attacks.

“Silence of the French authorities”

While the French justice system has issued arrest warrants against the jihadists and the Iraqi authorities have expressed the wish to see these people transferred to their country, the steps “however encountered the silence of the French authorities”regret the authors, including lawyer Marie Dosé or the president of the 13onze15 Fraternité-Vérité association, Philippe Duperron. “We (…) officially ask the French authorities to transfer these men and women to French territory so that they can answer for their actions”they added.

It is, according to these actors in the case, “two French women and twelve French men” prosecuted in France for criminal conspiracy of a terrorist nature and imprisoned in Iraq where “all were sentenced between 2017 and 2019 to the death penalty (commuted to life imprisonment) or to twenty years of imprisonment”. They have since lived in “conditions of detention” Who “equivalent to inhuman and degrading treatment”according to the authors of the column.

Eleven French jihadists sentenced to death, then life imprisonment in Iraq, have officially submitted requests to be transferred to France to serve their sentences, AFP learned in early November from sources close to the case.