Syrian Kurds to begin trials of suspected foreign ISIS fighters

US-backed administration says international community has failed to 'fulfil its duties'

Wives and children of former ISIS fighters line up in the foreign section of the Al Hol refugee camp in northern Syria. Getty Images

The Kurdish-led administration in north-east Syria has announced it will begin holding trials for the thousands of suspected foreign ISIS members it has held since the fall of the self-proclaimed caliphate.

Administration official Bedran Jiya Kurd announced the news on Saturday as a "significant step in our efforts to combat terrorism and achieve justice".

Mr Kurd said the process was "due to the international community's failure to fulfil its duties in the prosecution of terrorists".

Thousands of suspected ISIS members have been held by the US-backed autonomous administration since the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the international coalition pushed the terrorists out of its last Syrian stronghold of Baghouz in March 2019.

It comes only days after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned the fight against ISIS, which maintains a presence in Syria and neighbouring Iraq, is not over.

US generals have previously warned the terrorist group could return to Syria in "one or two years" if American troops leave the area.

Authorities in the region have long called on foreign states to repatriate and try their citizens who have been held in prisons and camps for the past four years, citing security concerns after prison breaks and attacks on officials in camps.

At least 11,000 people held in Al Hol camp are foreign citizens from about 60 countries, whose governments have refused to repatriate them. Iraq, which repatriated 50 of its citizens from Syria last week, says it has brought home more than 3,000 suspected ISIS fighters and tried many over their alleged crimes.

Trials have also been held involving ISIS fighters in Germany, mainly for alleged and proven crimes against the Yazidi religious minority who suffered genocide under ISIS.

Mr Kurd told Reuters a local counter-terrorism law broadened last year would be used to try the fighters. He said the accused could appoint a lawyer but did not say courts would appoint them.

North-east Syria does not practise capital punishment, in contrast to the policy of Damascus and neighbouring Iraq, which has executed thousands of suspected ISIS fighters.

Human rights groups and the US-led coalition would be invited to attend the trials, he added, although he did not specify when they would begin.

A western diplomat working in Syria told Reuters the decision was surprising.

The idea had been discussed in the past but pushed aside primarily over questions on the legality of a regional court operating separately from the Syrian government.

"No one thought they were going to do this," the diplomat said. "We take it very seriously that they are holding a lot of people — but this is a separate issue from trying them. Trying them is a whole different beast."