US plans to send American ‘IS fighter’ to third country

Iraq sentences 212 to death in Mosul area since recapture from IS

WASHINGTON, April 18, (Agencies): The US government intends to hand over to a third country an American citizen captured in Syria allegedly fighting for the Islamic State group, rather than present him to the US justice system, a court filing showed Tuesday.

In the Trump administration’s first decision on how to deal with citizens caught fighting for a designated terror group, the US military plans to turn over the man, a dual US-Saudi citizen born in the United States and now held in Iraq, to an unnamed country as early as late Thursday.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which has been representing the man, known in court documents only as “John Doe”, said it plans to ask the court to block the transfer, arguing that he has not been charged with a crime and has the right to due process under US laws.

Iraqi courts have sentenced 212 people to death in Mosul and surrounding areas, most of them for complicity with Islamic State, since the area was retaken by Iraqi forces in July and August 2017, a judiciary spokesman said on Wednesday.

Mosul was home to two million people before being overrun in 2014 by Islamic State which proclaimed a “caliphate” stretching into neighbouring Syria.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared full victory over the group last December after Iraqi forces drove its last remnants from the country.

Since then, Human rights groups have accused Iraqi and other regional forces of inconsistencies in the judicial process and flawed trials leading to unfair convictions.

Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said on Wednesday that criminal courts falling under the Nineveh Federal Court of Appeals, whose jurisdiction includes Mosul, had so far ruled on a total of 815 cases since the area was recaptured from Islamic State.

“The statistics coming from the criminal courts show that 815 people have gone on trial and that 212 were sentenced to death. A further 150 were sentenced to life in prison,” said judiciary spokesman Judge Abdul-Sattar al-Birqdar.

It was not immediately clear how many, if any, of the death sentences had been already carried out.

“The vast majority of these rulings were against elements of the Islamic State terrorist organisation who were proven to have committed crimes, and came after public trials conducted in accordance with the law. Defendants were afforded their rights,” Birqdar said.

Another 341 people were jailed for various terms and 112 were acquitted, he said.

New York-based Human Rights Watch released an 80-page report in December accusing Iraqi federal and Kurdish regional judiciaries of violating the rights of Islamic State suspects with flawed trials, arbitrary detentions under harsh conditions and broad prosecutions.

The UN Security Council has decided to postpone a planned visit to Iraq ahead of May elections at the request of the Iraqi government, diplomats said Wednesday.

Iraq told the council in a letter this week that many officials will be busy with the election campaign, which kicked off on Saturday, and will not be able to meet with the ambassadors.