Iraqi judiciary: Life imprisonment for 7 French nationals convicted of belonging to ISIS

Today (Tuesday), an Iraqi court sentenced seven French nationals to life imprisonment, convicting them of belonging to ISIS and spreading terror among civilians.

The judge of the Third Karkh Investigation Court stated, in a public session held today in the presence of the defense lawyers assigned to defend the convicts, that sentences had been issued against seven convicts of Algerian origins who hold French citizenship, six of them to life imprisonment for 20 years, and another to 15 years for the crime of belonging to ISIS, working with the organization in Syria, and spreading terror among civilians, according to what the German News Agency reported.

The court judge said that this decision came for the sake of self-reformation and to pave the way for correcting the path of the convicts’ lives.

Yesterday morning (Monday), Jordanian security forces arrested the perpetrators of the bloody attack that targeted a church in Karak Governorate after a tight security operation. The three terrorists carried out the attack on a church in the village of Hammoud on Friday, killing nine people and wounding 25 others.

Informed sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that security intelligence operations led to limiting the scope of the search sites and investigating the three terrorists who carried out the attack, after they were holed up in an abandoned house in the village of Jdeidah to which they belong. They are two brothers and one of their cousins, choosing a place to hide that is only 5 minutes away from the church site. The sources reported that the terrorists barricaded themselves in the abandoned house for 60 hours, as the neighboring residents did not feel any movement in the house.

The sources explained that the security operation used drones and remotely piloted “robots,” and that “during which the terrorists fired from the roof of the house where they were holed up at the drone to prevent it from determining their location on aerial maps, noting that the security services eventually brought robots into the confrontation site to ensure that the targets were hit.”

Yesterday, the Iraqi Prime Minister terminated the assignment of Hamid Al-Shatri as head of the National Intelligence Service, according to what was reported by the Iraqi News Agency (INA), without providing further details. Al-Zaidi himself will temporarily manage the intelligence service until a new director is appointed.

Al-Shatari has assumed the presidency of the National Intelligence Service since December 19, 2024, after his appointment by former Prime Minister Muhammad Shiaa Al-Sudani, succeeding Raed Jouhi.

On the other hand, an Iraqi court issued an arrest warrant yesterday for the head of the Maysan Governorate Council, Mustafa Deir Abdul Hassan al-Muhammadawi, against the backdrop of a complaint filed by the Prime Minister’s Office regarding his threat to engage in civil disobedience, block roads, and separate Maysan Governorate from the body of Iraq, in protest against the continued closure of the Shayb border crossing with Iran.

Al-Muhammadawi gave the federal government in Baghdad until next Thursday to reopen the crossing before implementing his threats.