ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Iraq’s National Security Advisory said on Sunday that Islamic State (ISIS) detainees transferred from Syria will not remain in the country permanently, stressing that Baghdad is working to return them to their home countries.
“The presence of ISIS prisoners in Iraq is not permanent, and the government is working to return them to their countries,” Saeed al-Jiyashi, Strategic Affairs Advisor at the National Security Advisory, told the state-run Iraqi News Agency (INA). He added that those transferred belong to more than 67 countries.
Jiyashi said the relocation of detainees from Syria was carried out as a matter of national security, citing “exceptional circumstances” in Syrian prisons where security conditions had deteriorated. According to him, some facilities experienced security disruptions and prisoner escapes, prompting Iraqi authorities to transfer the detainees in officially announced numbers to high-security prisons inside Iraq.
Attacks by the Syrian army and allied armed groups on the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in January triggered ISIS prison breaks, prompting the transfer of 5,700 prisoners to Iraq under the US military supervision.