Iraqi court sentences 3 French members of IS to death

A Baghdad court Sunday sentenced to death three French citizens for being members of the Islamic State group, an Iraqi judicial official said.

The verdict raised fresh questions about the legal treatment of thousands of foreign nationals formerly with the extremist group.

The official said the three were among 12 French citizens whom the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces handed over to Iraq in January.

They can appeal the sentences within a month, according to the official.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorised to speak to the media.

Iraqi President Barham Saleh had said during a February visit to Paris that the 12 will be prosecuted in accordance with Iraqi laws.

The SDF has handed over to Iraq hundreds of suspected IS members in recent months.

The trials of the French nationals in Baghdad raise the difficult question of whether foreign IS suspects should be tried and punished in the country of their alleged crimes, even when there are serious doubts about the impartiality of the courts in Iraq and Syria.

The thousands of men and women who came from around the world to join the self-styled Islamic caliphate have been left in limbo following the group's territorial defeat earlier this year in Syria.

Many of their home countries hesitate to take back citizens they see as having gone willingly to join the extremist group.

In March, Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi asserted Iraq's authority to try foreign IS suspects detained in Syria because "the battlefields were one."