Baghdad: The presence of ISIS prisoners in Iraq is not permanent
Association for Defending Victims of Terrorism - Iraq's National Security Advisor announced that detainees of the ISIS terrorist group who were transferred from Syria will not remain in Iraq forever and they will be returned to their countries.
According to ISNA , Saeed al-Jayashi, the social affairs advisor to the Iraqi National Security Council, stated that the issue of transferring ISIS prisoners was a national security demand and exceptional circumstances occurred in Syria, such that the prisons fell into chaos and some of them opened and the prisoners escaped. Therefore, the number that was officially announced should have been transferred to Iraq and placed in strong and secure prisons.
According to the official Iraqi News Agency (WAA), Al-Jayashi added that Iraq has taken all security measures with the presence of all security agencies and the follow-up of the Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council, and the transfer took place under the direct supervision of the counter-terrorism agency, and the work was carried out successfully and no mistakes were made.
He stated that the Iraqi National Security Council had warned over the past five years about Syrian prisons threatening Iraqi security.
He further explained that the presence of ISIS prisoners in Iraq under the control of the Iraqi security and judicial apparatus is better, and dealing with them in this way is better than dealing with them in an open and unregulated space that could lead to new conflicts and tensions in the future.
Al-Jayashi concluded by emphasizing that the presence of ISIS prisoners in Iraq is not permanent and that the government is trying to return them to their countries of origin, and that all those who were transferred to Iraq are from more than 67 different countries.
At the same time, Karim Al-Nouri, the deputy minister of immigration and refugee affairs in Iraq, announced that about 3,000 Iraqi citizens are still present in the Al-Hol camp in Syria, and of these, about 1,200 are unwilling to return to Iraq due to being wanted.
According to Rudaw, in an interview with the media, Al-Nouri stated that Iraq is determined to completely close the Al-Hol camp case because the camp has become a center of terrorism and is a dangerous threat to Iraq, and is only 13 kilometers from the Iraqi border.
Regarding the return of the remaining Iraqis in the Al-Hol camp, he stated that after the recent events in Syria, no convoy has returned from this camp, and before these events, another convoy was scheduled to return to Iraq, but due to these circumstances, it was delayed.
The Deputy Minister of Immigration and Refugee Affairs of Iraq noted that so far, more than 20,000 Iraqis have been returned from Al-Hol camp, and of this number, nearly 19,000 of them were fully integrated into society and returned to their homes without facing security problems.
Previously, Hussein Allawi, advisor to the Iraqi Prime Minister, said: “ISIS prisoners on Iraqi soil will be subject to the laws of our country.”
Iraq is currently hosting 7,000 ISIS terrorists held in Syrian prisons in several batches. The first batch arrived in Iraq on January 26.
The Turkish ambassador to Iraq announced the existence of advanced understandings between Baghdad and Ankara to return ISIS prisoners with Turkish citizenship, whose number is reported to be more than 180.
