Iraqi court sentences six French nationals to life for IS group membership

An Iraqi ⁠court on ​Tuesday sentenced six French nationals to life in prison and ​a seventh to 15 years after convicting them of membership of the Islamic State (IS) group, a Reuters witness inside the courtroom said. The men were ​among ‌47 French IS group suspects transferred from ⁠detention facilities in northeast Syria to Iraq last year under a broader relocation ‌arrangement coordinated by US forces and Iraqi authorities. Read moreFrench jihadist who claimed 2016 Nice attack to be tried in Iraq, source says The presiding ⁠judge said the sentences were imposed under Iraq's counterterrorism law for joining the IS group and spreading fear. He ​added that the court had opted for ‌life imprisonment rather than the death penalty because the defendants were young. A seventh French national, aged 23, was given a 15-year sentence, ‌according to the Reuters witness. Abbas al-Maliki, one of the lawyers for ​the defendants, said the group would appeal the sentence in the Court of Cassation. Iraq opened the trial of the French ​nationals last month. The IS group 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. ​Many of the group's militants were detained, although remnants of the jihadist organisation continue to operate. The US announced in January that it had begun transferring IS group 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. (FRANCE 24 with Reuters)