Baghdad says it will prosecute Islamic State militants being moved from Syria to Iraq

Source: AP

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA and KAREEM CHEHAYEB
Updated 5:53 AM CST, January 25, 2026
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BAGHDAD (AP) — Baghdad will prosecute and try militants from the Islamic State group who are being transferred from prisons and detention camps in neighboring Syria to Iraq under a U.S.-brokered deal, Iraq said Sunday.

The announcement from Iraq’s highest judicial body came after a meeting of top security and political officials who discussed the ongoing transfer of some 9,000 IS detainees who have been held in Syria since the militant group’s collapse there in 2019.

The need to move them came after Syria’s nascent government forces last month routed Syrian Kurdish-led fighters — once top U.S. allies in the fight against IS — from areas of northeastern Syria they had controlled for years and where they had been guarding camps holding IS prisoners.

Syrian troops seized the sprawling al-Hol camp — housing thousands, mostly families of IS militants — from the Kurdish-led force, which withdrew as part of a ceasefire. Troops last Monday also took control of a prison in the northeastern town of Shaddadeh, from where some IS detainees had escaped during the fighting. Syrian state media later reported that many were recaptured.



Read more: https://apnews.com/article/iraq-islamic-state-syria-prisoners-3d95b9f871ecdf7540ad27a545c55703