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09-02-2026
WASHINGTON: The US military is in the process of transferring nearly 7,000 ISIS suspects from prisons and jails in northeast Syria to detention facilities across the border into Iraq. The operation comes amid concerns over security, following a mass escape from at least one prison in Syria, but it is also raising concern over the detainees’ fate.
An Iraqi security source told media that as of Thursday, nearly 2,000 detainees had been transferred into the country.
Iraq has vowed to put the prisoners on trial, and many could face terrorism charges in an opaque justice system that, just seven years ago, saw alleged ISIS militants, including European nationals, convicted and sentenced to death.
At the end of January, Syria’s Ministry of Defense announced a 15 day extension of a ceasefire that largely ended clashes between government troops and Kurdish forces in the country’s northeast. Those clashes had led to chaos around prisons holding ISIS detainees in the region long controlled by the US-allied Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
The defense ministry said the ceasefire extension was intended to enable the US-led military coalition to complete the transfer of the ISIS suspects to Iraq.
From the start of the US-led war against ISIS in 2014, the SDF played a decisive role in defeating the terrorist group and forcing it to abandon its self-declared Islamic caliphate in 2019. ISIS, while no longer holding significant territory, still poses a threat, and the SDF has continued working alongside coalition forces to carry out joint operations aimed at preventing its reemergence.
As a result of the initial offensive and the ongoing operations, thousands of ISIS suspects were detained in prisons and detention centers guarded by the SDF and coalition troops in northeast Syria but a deep lack of trust between the SDF and Syria’s new, post-dictatorial government, which is also backed by the US, led to the clashes that weakened security at the prisons holding the ISIS detainees, many of them hardened militants.
The uncertainty over security at the detention facilities alarmed not only the SDF and leaders in Damascus, but neighboring countries and the US, and Washington agreed to relocate the roughly 7,000 ISIS suspects to more secure detention facilities in Iraq.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed the plan, saying the prisoners would “be in Iraq temporarily”, and urging the detainees’ home countries to repatriate their nationals.
In Iraq, officials wary of further mass escapes moved quickly to tighten security along the border with Syria while offering secure facilities to hold transferred detainees.
“It is better to have them imprisoned and secured in Iraq than worry about their escapes and releases in Syria”, one Iraqi security source, who was not authorized to speak on the matter, told media but while Rubio said the ISIS suspects would only be held temporarily in Iraq, the government in Baghdad has gone further, saying it’s ready to put them on trial.
Iraq’s top legal official, the President of the Supreme Judicial Council, Judge Dr. Faiq Zidan, said in a televised address on Jan. 23 that his country was fully prepared to handle the cases of ISIS suspects, foreign and domestic.
“While some countries refuse to receive their nationals involved in terrorist crimes, the Iraqi judiciary confirms its full readiness to try terrorists detained in camps within Syrian territory, in accordance with national laws and international obligations, ensuring fair and decisive trials, achieving justice for the victims of terrorism.(Int’l Monitoring Desk)
