Baghdad (AFP) - At the Karkh Criminal Court in Baghdad, French prisoners accused of belonging to the Islamic State organization appear one after another: orange clothes, shaved faces, and in their words there is remorse that does not forget the terror that the jihadists have spread for years in the hearts of millions.

Published on: 02/11/2026 - 10:13

Last year, 47 French nationals were transferred from Syria to Iraq. Their trials began in September on charges of belonging to the jihadist organization, which between 2014 and 2017 controlled vast areas of the two countries and committed many violations and atrocities. Although it consisted mainly of Iraqis and Syrians, there were also many foreigners in its ranks.

In its first decisions last week, the court, headed by Judge Muhammad Salman, sentenced nine people convicted of belonging to the organization to life imprisonment, meaning a period of up to 20 years, as Salman explained, and 15 years in prison to a 24-year-old young man whom his mother took with her to Syria more than a decade ago.

During the sentencing, the young man, whose name AFP refrained from revealing for reasons related to his judicial file, said in a trembling voice in Arabic, “I went to Syria, but my mother chose for me, so what is my fault?”

Each defendant appears before the court in several sessions attended by Agence France-Presse. In the first session, the accused is introduced and a lawyer is assigned to him. In subsequent sessions, the court displays documents from his judicial file: photographs, the date and place of his birth, the number of his family members and their jobs, and sometimes his registration papers in the organization.

After that, the interrogation begins, and the defendants narrate their travel journey from France to Syria. The court then charges them with the "crime of belonging to ISIS terrorist organizations." In a final session, the verdict is pronounced.

During one of the sessions, a prisoner leans against the wooden bars separating him from the judges. He appeared to be a right-handed amputee who had lost one of his eyes. He said he lost them while fighting with ISIS in Syria.

Another person, who is not versed in Arabic, brought tears to his eyes as he struggled to understand the judge’s words, much of which was lost in oral translation into French.

"I am remorseful and sad"

The accused, Kamal bin Mubarak (42 years old), said that he worked as a driver for the Islamic police affiliated with the jihadist organization in Raqqa in northern Syria, adding, “I regret and feel sad for myself and for myself, because I was not young when the organization laughed at me.”

He recounted that, with the beginning of the conflict in Syria in 2011, he felt “angry over the violations of the (Bashar al-Assad) regime against the Syrian people.” He embraced “the organization’s ideology (...) which used to deny the Qur’an,” as he said in court, adding, “I did not understand that until I was in prison and the Qur’an became my treatment.”

Adel Bououn (28 years old), in turn, said before he was sentenced to life imprisonment, "I regret everything I did. I lost everything."

According to the court, Bououn participated with the organization in operations in Aleppo and Palmyra, without his precise actions becoming clear to those present.

With the support of the international coalition led by Washington, the organization was defeated in 2017 in Iraq, and in 2019 in Syria, where thousands suspected of belonging to jihadist groups were detained, along with their families, in prisons and camps administered by the Kurdish forces that were the spearhead in defeating the organization, until the beginning of this year.

Boaun recounted that the organization’s detainees lived in the prisons of the Kurdish forces in Syria for “very difficult years,” explaining, “Many prisoners died, and we were subjected to physical and psychological torture.”

At the beginning of this year, the new Syrian authorities that overthrew Assad's rule and reached an agreement with the Kurds, who controlled large areas in the north and east of the country, took over the administration of the prisons where the jihadists were located.

The US Army subsequently transferred more than 5,700 detainees of about sixty nationalities to Iraq, where prisons were already crowded with those suspected of belonging to the organization.

Human rights groups denounced the rapid nature of the trials of those accused in terrorism cases in Iraq, considering that sentences are issued in a hurry and based on confessions under torture.

Al-Khader Al-Seboui (34 years old), one of the defendants in one of the sessions, confirmed that he worked exclusively in communications in Syria during the period of the organization’s control, adding, “This whole trial is about pressure. You recorded statements that were not mine.”

Among the defendants who have not yet been represented is Adrian Ghayal, who moved to Syria in 2015 and, on behalf of the organization, claimed responsibility for the Nice attack in southern France, which killed 86 people on July 14, 2016.

"Inhuman treatment"

In another session, the faces of three defendants appeared very emotional when they saw their brothers who came from France. The judge allowed them to chat aside with their family members for a few minutes, after many years of separation.

The family members preferred not to tell journalists, to avoid social stigma and to preserve their privacy.

In early October, French lawyers Mathieu Baggar and Marie Douzet, who are defending about 30 of the 47 French nationals, said that the Iraqi judiciary prevented them from entering Iraqi territory to participate in their clients’ trial sessions, against the backdrop of statements in which they denounced the “inhuman treatment” to which detainees are subjected.

The two lawyers are demanding that the prisoners be deported to France to allow the judiciary there to try them.

Their inability to attend court prompted the appointment of two Iraqi lawyers to handle their files. The two Iraqi lawyers refused to tell Agence France-Presse.

Bagar, the agent of the young man who was sentenced to 15 years in prison, told AFP, “Even if his sentence was different, he was tortured as if he were an adult and tried as an adult.”

Observers, officials from the French embassy, ​​and journalists are attending the trials. Human rights organizations expressed their fear that death sentences would be issued in these trials.

Iraq is still recovering from the repercussions of the organization’s practices, which left more than 200 mass graves, not all of which have been found yet, and which may contain up to 12,000 bodies, according to the United Nations.

Despite its defeat, the organization still considers Iraq and Syria a “key ideological and operational arena,” with up to three thousand fighters, most of them in Syria, according to a UN Security Council report in August.

Before the court in Baghdad, Thomas Barnouin (45 years old), who is awaiting his ruling on November 18, said that he went to Syria at the beginning of the conflict “believing it was a religious duty to defend Muslims.”

However, "the organization operated according to the law of the jungle and not the law of God," he said, adding, "We did not know that it wanted to cause terrorist bombings in our country, France as well..., and I disavow all its crimes."

He concluded, "Today I am like a dead person. The space available to me in prison here is the size of a coffin."

© 2026 AFP

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