ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – A Baghdad court on Thursday sentenced three French nationals to life imprisonment over their alleged affiliation with the Islamic State (ISIS), state media reported, days after another batch of French jihadists were sentenced. 

“The Karkh Criminal Court has handed down life sentences to three French nationals for their affiliation with the terrorist organization ISIS,” the court said in a statement on Thursday.

On Tuesday, an Iraqi court sentenced six other French nationals to life imprisonment and another one to 15 years after convicting them of being ISIS members.

The sentences were handed down under Iraq’s Anti-Terrorism Law.

“The proceedings took place in the presence of their legal counsel and representatives from the French Embassy in Iraq,” it added.

The French nationals were among 47 suspects handed over to Iraq by Syria last year.

Iraq’s judiciary in September announced it had completed interrogating over 5,700 ISIS prisoners that were transferred from Syria during the January clashes between Kurdish-led forces in northeast Syria (Rojava) and Damascus.

The interrogations found that the detainees include people from 67 nationalities, including 19 European countries, 16 Arab countries, and 32 other foreign nationalities.

Baghdad has repeatedly called on international countries to repatriate their nationals who are detained in Iraqi prisons over ISIS-affiliation charges.

ISIS took control of swathes of Syrian and Iraqi territory in 2014, announcing their self-proclaimed caliphate with the city of Mosul as its capital. They were territorially defeated with assistance from the US-led coalition forces in Iraq by 2017 and in Syria by 2019.

Despite its territorial defeat, the group continued to pose a threat to Iraq’s national security through sporadic hit-and-run operations.