SOHR: SDF hands over 50 suspected ISIS fighters to Iraq

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Friday handed over 50 suspected Islamic State (ISIS) fighters with Iraqi nationality to the Iraqi army, according to sources.

“The Joint Operations Command, through coordination and joint cooperation, received 50 terrorists from ISIS holding Iraqi citizenship, and they were arrested inside Syrian territory, and they were handed over through… Rabia border,” said Tahsin al-Khafaji, spokesman for Iraq’s Joint Operation Command in a tweet on Saturday.

The Iraqi Security Media Cell also reported the repatriation earlier in the day, saying they received them “for the purpose of completing the necessary procedures against them.”

The spokesperson and the cell did not elaborate whether Iraq received the suspected ISIS fighters from the Syrian regime or Kurdish forces. However, Iraq’s Rabia town borders with Kurdish-held areas in Syria and Amin Fanash, mayor of Mosul, told Rudaw on Saturday that the SDF handed over the 50 Iraqis to the Joint Operations Command.

“These fighters were handed over on the borders of Rabia in Nineveh province and Rojava [northeast Syria] and then transferred to Baghdad,” added the mayor.

ISIS controlled swathes of Syrian and Iraqi land in 2014 but it was territorially defeated in both neighbouring countries by 2019. The SDF captured a large number of ISIS fighters in the group’s last bastion, Baghouz, in early 2019. Thousands of suspected ISIS fighters remain in the SDF prisons and about 56,000 people with alleged links to ISIS are held in the notorious al-Hol camp in Hasaka.

Iraqi officials and the cell did not mention when they received the 50 people but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said on Friday that they were handed over earlier in the day.

The UK-based war monitor also said that 150 families of 620 people, who were allegedly members of ISIS fighters, were transferred from al-Hol camp to al-Jada camp in Nineveh province. An official from the Rojava administration told AFP that the families left the camp on Thursday.

Al-Jada, in Nineveh province, is one of just two camps still open in areas under federal Iraqi control. The camp mainly houses families with suspected links to ISIS who were transferred from Rojava.

The SDF and the Iraqi army enjoy good relations on the border and they have also coordinated in anti-ISIS operations in the past.