Fourteen French jihadists are detained in Iraqi prisons, twelve men and two women. Detained by Arab-Kurdish forces in 2017 or 2018 in Syria, the men, all Islamic State (IS) fighters, were transferred to Iraq under a secret agreement with Baghdad by Jean-Yves Le Drian, then foreign minister. , and criticized. by the UN special rapporteur for human rights. The women, for their part, were arrested by the Iraqi army during the battle of Mosul, where they lived with their ISIS member husbands.
Once in Baghdad, the men were imprisoned, tried, and sentenced to death for participation in a terrorist organization, bringing shame to Paris. The trials, which took place in May and June 2019, lasted only half an hour, without a lawyer or translator. The accused, who stressed that they had never fought in Iraq but in Syria, also denounced torture. At the time, government spokesperson Sibeth Ndiaye stated that Paris did not object. “the fairness of these trials” who was standing “in good condition with a bumper present”. Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court ended up commuting the death sentences to life imprisonment in June 2023. But their detention conditions pose a problem and they are now requesting their repatriation to serve their sentence in France.
Since 2019, these Frenchmen, with the exception of one of them, imprisoned in Nassiriya, in southern Iraq, have been detained in Al-Russafa prison, in the Iraqi capital. This is also the case of the two French women, Djamila Boutoutaou and Mélina Boughedir, sentenced to twenty years in prison in 2018. No matter how serious the crimes they may have committed, their conditions of detention are appalling and undignified, according to four lawyers . French people who have been able to visit their clients, twice in the last twelve months, in their Baghdad prison: the first time from September 29 to October 3, 2023, then from February 20 to 21, 2024.are Matthieu Bagard, Marie Dosé, Chirine Heydari-Malayeri and Richard Sédillot have written, addressed to the French authorities, two detailed memoranda that the world He was able to consult.
spoiled food
In the men’s prison, lawyers were able to visit five French prisoners for whom they are lawyers. Four of them are parked in a cell that has between 108 and 123 prisoners, depending on the time, per 100 square meters. It is impossible for the inmates to sit all together on the floor. They sleep on dirty mattresses placed on the floor, on their sides and in groups so they can lie down. The cell’s air conditioning was broken, so the guards asked the prisoners to contribute to buy a new one.
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