BAGHDAD: Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said on Thursday it would begin legal proceedings against Daesh detainees transferred from Syria, after the rapid collapse of Kurdish-led forces in northeast Syria triggered concerns over prison security.
More than 10,000 members of the ultra-hard-line militant group have been held for years in about a dozen prisons and detention camps guarded by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Syria’s northeast.
The US military said on Tuesday its forces had transferred 150 Daesh detainees from Syria to Iraq and that the operation could eventually see up to 7,000 detainees moved out of Syria.
It cited concerns over security at the prisons, which also hold thousands more women and children with ties to the militant group, after military setbacks suffered by the SDF.
A US official told Reuters on Tuesday that about 200 low-level Daesh fighters escaped from Syria’s Shaddadi prison, although Syrian government forces had recaptured many of them.
