Baghdad– Inside a heavy-security detention facility in Baghdad, men from different countries and nationalities were brought into the interrogation room one by one and interrogated by Iraqi officials.
These prisoners are suspected members of the extremist Islamic State group recently transferred from Syria to Iraq But Baghdad’s request The move was welcomed by the US-led coalition, which has been fighting IS for years.
Over a period of several weeks, US forces freed more than 5,000 IS detainees of 60 different nationalities from prisons in US-backed and Kurdish-led northeastern Syria. Syrian Democratic Forces for Baghdad.
The transfers have helped calm fears that the fighting in Syria would allow IS prisoners to escape from detention camps there and join terrorist sleeper cells that are still capable of carrying out attacks in both Iraq and Syria today.
On Thursday, The Associated Press was given rare access to the sprawling detention facility in western Baghdad—now known as al-Karkh Central Prison, but widely known as Camp Cooper after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Saddam Hussein – Where men are being interrogated.
Iraq is putting on trial some of the thousands of IS prisoners
Iraq is putting on trial some of the thousands of IS prisoners who were held for years in Syria without charge or access to the judicial system.
Iraqi judge Ali Hussein Jafat, who is leading the committee interrogating IS prisoners brought from Syria, says this is not straightforward due to the huge number of prisoners involved.
“It’s complicated and not easy at all,” he said. He said those detained were from 14 Arab countries and 46 other countries.
He said that many prisoners have respiratory diseases so a medical centre has been set up to treat them.
To make room for newcomers from Syria, thousands of prisoners long held in al-Karkh were transferred to other prisons in Iraq.
Interrogations usually take place in stages – the men are brought in in batches, handcuffed, dressed in yellow or grey uniforms and medical face masks, and led down a long corridor with rooms on either side.
Then, one by one, they are taken to an interrogation room, where an officer takes their information. From behind a small window, the AP could observe the interrogation but could not understand the questions or the detainees’ answers. It is unclear whether the prisoners were under duress.
Some prisoners are taken to the medical centre for examination.
The army ousted Syria’s new government in December 2024. Powerful Bashar al-Assad launched an offensive in January and captured wide areas from the Kurdish-led SDF.
A ceasefire was later reached, ending the fighting, and the SDF withdrew as part of the agreement.
At that time, the United States announced that almost 9,000 prisoners held in more than a dozen Syrian detention centres will be transferred to Iraq.
So far 5,383 IS suspects have been brought to Iraq. Jafat said the last shipment was expected to arrive on Sunday.
When IS declared a caliphate over large parts of Syria and Iraq—a self-declared territory under traditional Islamic rule— which the terrorist group captured in 2014, it attracted extremists from around the world.
On behalf of the caliphate, extremists plotted attacks around the world, killing hundreds of people from Europe to Arab countries and Asia.
The group also committed atrocities in Syria and Iraq, including enslaving thousands of Yazidi women and girls who were taken when militants seized control of northern Iraq. Strict rules were imposed, with IS beheading its opponents, thieves having their hands cut off, and women accused of adultery being stoned to death.
Over the years, an international campaign by the US-led coalition defeated IS in Iraq in 2017 and Syria in 2019.
“Some of them are extremely dangerous,” Jafat said of the detainees.
He said that, so far, he has seen prisoners from Australia, Canada, Turkey, Germany, Britain, and the former Soviet Union. Among them, he said, is an Israeli-Arab man.
Many countries do not want their citizens to return to the militants, and Jafat stated that it is too early to determine whether those detained could be extradited or sent back to their countries of origin.
He stated that the public would be able to witness the trials of those who committed crimes in Iraq.
