Kurdistan hands over 1,400 Daesh detainees to Iraqi govt
After forming a joint judicial committee, Iraq’s
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) handed over about 1,400 detainees belonging
to ISIS to the federal government in preparation for the extradition of more.
Dindar Zebari, the KRG coordinator for international
advocacy said in a press release that Erbil has begun handing over detainees to
Baghdad, adding that they were mostly from the governorates of Anbar, Saladin,
Diyala and al-Hawija.
Zebari stated that the joint committee was formed
with the federal government to tackle this issue, adding that all the detained
individuals were investigated, but no court ruling was carried out against them
by the KRG’s judiciary.
Zebari said that the KRG’s processes with the
arrests are clear, indicating that the investigations are based on evidence, in
addition to confessions by the accused, unlike what the human Rights Watch
reported that the arrests are based on forced confessions, not hard evidence.
In a report published on Sunday, the Human Rights
Watch said that Arab detainees serving their sentences in the Kurdistan region
for their connection to ISIS face the risk of re-arrest after their release if
they try to reunite with their families in areas controlled by Baghdad.
In response to the report that stated that the
problem stems from a lack of coordination between the separate judicial systems
of the KRG and the Iraqi government, Zebari said: “A joint committee of the
highest judicial authorities has been formed, headed by the heads of three
appeals courts in order to exchange information.”
Zebari also said that detainees are able to obtain
documents proving their sentence was served in order to avoid re-arrest through
lawyers, contrary to what the Human Rights Watch report said.
