[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 15




IRAQ:

They Left to Join ISIS. Now Europe Is Leaving Their Citizens to Die in 
Iraq.----A Belgian fighter captured in Syria was transported to Iraq to face 
trial. He's now on death row.



There was no other way out. After months under siege in the Syrian city of 
Raqqa, the Belgian Islamic State member Bilal al-Marchohi decided to escape. He 
fled his post as a religious police officer at the break of dawn on August 29, 
2017, and ran with his wife and son to the closest enemy checkpoint. With his 
arms up, he handed himself over to the Kurdish militants in the hope of 
eventually being repatriated to Belgium. The family was immediately separated, 
and his spouse and child were transferred to a nearby Islamic State relatives 
camp.

Along with other jihadi comrades, al-Marchohi was driven to a prison near the 
city of Tabqa, where he was interrogated by U.S. officials on his role in the 
organization, his closest companions, and on weaponry manufacturing. The 
23-year-old jihadi told them he used to attend the Friday prayers at De Koepel 
mosque in Antwerp, whose imam, Youssef, ended up joining the fight in Syria. 
Al-Marchohi waited until he turned 18 to cross the Turkish-Syrian border with 
his girlfriend and other acquaintances, first joining the Nusra Front and later 
deserting to the Islamic State, after internal clashes erupted within the armed 
opposition brigades.

U.S. soldiers took him to Kobani in northern Syria and from there to Erbil in 
Iraqi Kurdistan by helicopter, he recalls. “I was alone. I stayed there for 2 
months and I went crazy. It was very hard. … Because of the strong lights, I 
was not able to sleep,” al-Marchohi told Foreign Policy in an exclusive 
interview. The Belgian was one of the first jihadis transferred by the U.S. 
army from Syria to Iraq after the liberation of Raqqa, as part of a series of 
renditions, during which at least 3 other European citizens were handed over to 
the Iraqi judiciary.

The Belgian was one of the first jihadis transferred by the U.S. army from 
Syria to Iraq after the liberation of Raqqa, as part of a series of renditions, 
during which at least three other European citizens were handed over to the 
Iraqi judiciary, possibly in contravention of international law.

“I even met the Belgians there and I cooperated with them,” he said, referring 
to Belgian intelligence agents. “They told me: ‘We will take you to the local 
government now, and you will wait to see the judge and maybe you go back to 
Belgium, maybe not.’” But al-Marchohi wasn’t repatriated; instead he was 
escorted from Erbil to Baghdad, where he was delivered to Iraqi 
counterterrorism forces and subjected to a new, harsher round of 
interrogations.

Western governments are generally reluctant to facilitate the repatriation of 
Islamic State militants. After the departure of more than 5,000 European 
citizens, European countries don’t wan’t to deal with the returnees file. 
“Except Germany, no other European country is interested in the return of their 
citizens accused of being Daesh members,” claimed Hisham al-Hashimi, an Iraqi 
researcher who briefs officials on jihadi group dynamics. “Western countries 
don’t have a policy for jihadi returnees, they are not ready for their arrival. 
… And if they get a death penalty in Iraq, they will be thankful,” he says.

The issue of repatriation would also require consensus across the European 
Union from a security perspective. If a returnee enters the Schengen Area, all 
of that territory would be at risk because of free movement. A returned Belgian 
could strike in Spain.

Bringing Islamic State members back also exposes a judicial weakness; a lack of 
evidence could lead to short prison sentences, and jihadis might only serve 
three- to five-year jail terms before they are back on the streets. If a 
terrorist attack were perpetrated by a repatriated fighter in coming years, the 
political party that approved their return would face devastating consequences.

Al-Marchohi has become a pawn in this international political chess 
match—rejected by his own nation and subject to the judicial system of one 
where he has never lived. He claims Iraqi officers fabricated a confession to 
show he could therefore be tried under Iraqi jurisdiction. “They wrote that I 
got arrested in Mosul, and forced me to put my fingerprints on it,” he 
explains, despite the fact that he surrendered in Raqqa. An investigative judge 
examined this evidence and passed his case on to a criminal court.

It was not until a year later that al-Marchohi attended his first hearing, at 
Rusafa court in Baghdad. In front of three magistrates, confined in a wooden 
cage, the Belgian got a court-appointed defense lawyer with whom he couldn’t 
communicate before the trial. During the third hearing, with Belgian consular 
officials in attendance, he was sentenced to death by hanging for “belonging to 
a terrorist organization and his involvement in fighting against Iraqi forces 
in Mosul.”

The Iraqi Supreme Court later published a purported quote by Abu Fadel 
al-Belgiki (al-Marchohi’s Islamic State nom de guerre) following the formal 
resolution: “We fought fierce battles with Iraqi forces in Mosul and when the 
army began to advance and control most of the area, I fled towards Syria, but I 
could not escape and was arrested inside Iraqi territory.”

His fingerprints were taken, and the U.S. military personnel took a picture of 
him looking exhausted and wild-haired. The classified report establishes the 
place of detention as “Raqqah, Syria.” It doesn’t mention Iraq at all.

But there is evidence that contradicts this supposed confession. When 
al-Marchohi was interrogated in Syria, the information was compiled under 
Operation Gallant Phoenix by the U.S. Army, which gathers data and evidence on 
foreign terrorist fighters for the multinational mission there. His 
fingerprints were taken, and the U.S. military personnel took a picture of him 
looking exhausted and wild-haired. The classified tactical report establishes 
the place of detention as “Raqqah, Syria” on “29/0400/Z/AUG/17” (Aug. 29, 2017, 
at 4 a.m.), and doesn’t mention Iraq at all.

Nevertheless, this evidence wasn’t introduced during the court hearing. The 
confidential information is “provided only for intelligence purposes in an 
effort to develop investigative leads,” the report explained “and cannot be 
used in affidavits, court proceedings, subpoenas, or for other legal or 
judicial purposes.” But this doesn’t mean the Belgian authorities were not 
briefed. Indeed, “Belgian Military Intelligence and Security Service is always 
required before transmission of any information contained in this document,” 
according to the classified file.

Al-Marchohi was not the first European jihadi to be sentenced to death in Iraq. 
The Belgian Tarik Jadaoun received the same sentence a year earlier, as did 11 
French men transferred from Syria in January 2019. Lamia K., a German national, 
faced the same fate until officials in Berlin insisted on Germany’s stance 
against capital punishment and, after the appeals process, her sentence was 
commuted to a 20-year jail term. So far none of them have been executed.

Belgian officials claim, like their counterparts in other European countries, 
that they will lobby, through diplomatic channels, against al-Marchohi’s death 
penalty if it is eventually imposed after the appeal process. “We always fight 
for the abolition of the death penalty, whether it is through international 
organizations and fora or in our bilateral relations in countries where it is 
still in vigor,” said Nadia Benini, the deputy spokesperson of the Belgian 
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Nevertheless, they insist they respect Iraqi 
sovereignty and that they “try to remain discreet in consular affairs.”

Each EU member state addresses the returnees differently: The U.K. has stripped 
terror suspects of citizenship, as was the case with Shamima Begum, the London 
teenager who traveled to Syria at the age of 15. Under the 2006 amendment of 
the 1981 British Nationality Act, a person can be deprived of citizenship if it 
would be “conducive to the public good” and the person is eligible for another 
passport. The U.K. has made her stateless, an illegal act according to 
international conventions, because she never applied for her parents’ 
Bangladeshi nationality.

The U.K. “is not even considering sending the children back,” said Richard 
Barrett, a former director of global counterterrorism at the British foreign 
intelligence service MI6. “They say no to anybody and they’re not talking about 
it. It’s basically waiting for a crunch. Only if they escape and go back to 
Turkey, they might be sent back to the U.K. in a week.”

France and Belgium are examining fighters on a case-by-case basis, and have 
repatriated at least 21, children, some of them orphans, since the fall of the 
Islamic State’s last territory. But the return of adults is still unlikely. 
Lawyers in Baghdad have even suggested that there has been diplomatic 
interference in the judicial process, as was allegedly the case with the French 
jihadi Mélina Boughedir: “Between the first and the second session of the trial 
the French ambassador in Iraq had a meeting with the head of the [Supreme] 
Judicial Council Faiq Zidan,” claimed NasserAddin Madlool Abed, Boughedir’s 
Iraqi attorney. She was initially sentenced to a seven-month jail term, “but in 
the second hearing recess, the main judge left to a private room. He was on the 
phone for 15 minutes and when he came back … he gave her a life sentence,” he 
recalled.

Moreover, Germany, which has recently accepted four children from Syria, 
accepts there is not a strategy to bring foreign fighters back: “We examine 
case by case,” said a member of the German diplomatic service. “The cases come 
to us and not vice versa. … Because, is there a legal framework?” he asked 
rhetorically, pointing out the lack of extradition agreements.

The subject has even been a source of disagreement within the international 
coalition that fought the Islamic State. The United States has lobbied EU 
members to take their citizens back. “We are still trying to get the countries 
to repatriate them but first, they don’t want to do it; and second, if they do 
it they want to keep it entirely quiet. Which I don’t personally agree 
with,”said U.S. Col. Sean Ryan, a coalition spokesman.

The transfer of terrorist suspects from Syria to Iraq is being used as a 
mechanism to circumvent the judicial and political vacuum in northern Syria.

The Kurdish-led authority, derived from the postwar partition of Syria and 
administered by the Democratic Union Party (PYD), does not have international 
diplomatic recognition. This means Kurdish courts cannot prosecute foreign 
Islamic State convicts. Furthermore, European governments fear that 
imprisonment in an unstable territory might lead to a prison break—as happened 
in Derik prison near the Iraqi-Syrian border in April, when French detainees 
turned against their guards, although no one managed to escape—or encourage 
bribery.

The most publicized rendition transfer was the handover of the 11 French 
jihadis in January. During a subsequent visit by Iraqi President Barham Salih 
to Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron admitted that the operation had 
taken place, and disavowed responsibility by saying that it was up to the Iraqi 
authorities “to decide, sovereignly,” if captured jihadis had to be subjected 
to legal proceedings. “They are accused of having commanded operations against 
Iraqis,” added Salih. But although there is evidence that some of the 13 French 
detainees had previously entered Iraqi territory, there is no such evidence in 
the case of al-Marchohi.

The Americans took al-Marchohi out “because the U.S. unfortunately can do 
whatever they like to prosecute a foreigner,” explained Clive Stafford Smith, 
founder of the London legal-action charity Reprieve and a Guantánamo detainees’ 
lawyer who has been hired by some relatives of Western-born Islamic State 
members. “No European country can do it because under European law it’s 
illegal. Rendition is illegal,” he added. “You are rendering someone into a 
nonfair trial, to face the death penalty, which is also illegal … so the 
Americans have to be in charge of that.”

Iraqi prosecutors also lack proper evidence to prosecute foreign fighters, 
claimed Thomas Renard, a researcher at the Egmont Institute in Brussels and the 
author of a report on European jihadi returnees. “Some of them may not have 
been in Iraq … so what is the legitimacy of this country to prosecute them?” he 
asked. “The judicial system is not up to international standards either. We’ve 
witnessed trials with no lawyers, that last 15 minutes, where children of 12 
years old or less have been tried,” he added. “And when they are convicted, 
they end up in Iraqi jails that are not meeting international standards of 
detention.”

Those who have been relocated from Syrian to Iraqi jails have hugely varied 
profiles: One of them is Lahcen Gueboudj, a 59-year-old French man who claims 
to have traveled to Raqqa in search of his son, and who is now serving life in 
prison; another is a 30-year-old Austrian of Afghan descent, whom the Iraqis 
accuse of being a fighter, although he insisted in an interview with Foreign 
Policy that he entered Syria to join his relatives and live under sharia rule. 
His trial is scheduled for October.

An Iraqi judge, who presides over some of these proceedings and prefers to 
remain anonymous, sees it differently. “Even if the ISIS crimes have been 
committed abroad outside of Iraq, this group ISIS has destroyed our country, so 
we can sentence them here anyway,” he said in an interview. But universal 
jurisdiction can be exercised only after national legislation recognizes the 
relevant crimes. And the Iraqi penal code doesn’t define such offenses as sex 
slavery, mass executions, beheadings, or crucifixion of prisoners.

“Although this is a big burden for me … and also very expensive, some countries 
are not behaving properly,” he told Foreign Policy, suggesting that foreign 
fighters’ home countries are responsible for taking them back, but are 
unwilling to do so. “As a consequence, Iraq will become the cemetery of the 
remaining of Daesh,” he adds, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.

In the meantime, men like al-Marchohi await justice or execution in Iraqi 
jails. It’s a situation that should make Belgian—and other European 
officials—think twice.

Belgium has seen a huge wave of Islamic State recruitment and became the No. 1 
source of jihadis per capita in Europe; at least 413 traveled to Iraq and 
Syria, and 125 have returned so far. Deradicalization programs are often not 
effective, because of their voluntary nature. Attendance is optional and they 
don’t commute any part of the sentence. The only programs that seem to get good 
results are those carried out by imams, who teach deradicalization by 
deconstructing jihadi theology, as the imam Ahmed Zerdoua does in Antwerp 
prison.

The caliphate’s history suggests that recruits from Belgium were the vanguard 
of the European presence in the Islamic State. They even introduced technical 
advances to the battlefield, such as drones, rocket metalwork, and the 
development of anti-aircraft missiles equipped with a heat-sensor mechanism—a 
project that was halted by the military offensive in Raqqa, where the research 
center was located. Belgians even established their own checkpoints, forcing 
the local population to pay high taxes. But their crimes should not strip them 
of their European citizenship rights.

Belgians even established their own checkpoints, forcing the local population 
to pay high taxes. But their crimes should not strip them of their European 
citizenship rights.

It’s a matter of security, too. The case of the Belgian Oussama Atar 
demonstrates that incarceration abroad is often a path to deeper indoctrination 
and international terrorism networking. Atar waged jihad in Iraq in 2004, in 
the ranks of al Qaeda, until his detention in Ramadi a year later. The captive 
ended up in Camp Bucca and Abu Ghraib jails, where he served a 7-year jail term 
with the future founders of the Islamic State.

It was likely there that he made the connections he used 10 years later in 
Syria to become one of the masterminds, according to French intelligence 
services, of the November 2015 Paris and March 2016 Brussels attacks that 
killed 130 and 32 people, respectively.

If Atar had been extradited to Belgium after his verdict, he’d have never spent 
countless hours locked with other extremist Iraqi jihadis, he’d have never 
established strong links with the leaders of the Islamic State, and he might 
have never adopted their hardcore terrorist mindset—a course of events that led 
him back to Belgium briefly in 2012 and then back to the battlefield in Syria 
in 2013, from where he helped plan 2 of the Islamic State’s bloodiest terrorist 
attacks on European soil.

(source: foreignpolicy.com)