The US military has completed the transfer of thousands of Islamic State (IS) detainees from Syria to Iraq, the US Central Command has said.
CENTCOM said more than 5,700 adult male IS suspects were transported by US forces from detention facilities in Syria to Iraqi custody, in an operation that began on 21 January.
The prisoners were transferred to Iraq at the request of Baghdad.
“We appreciate Iraq’s leadership and recognition that transferring the detainees is essential to regional security,” said Admiral Brad Cooper, a CENTCOM commander.
Over the last three weeks, the US military escorted detainees from 60 different nationalities from prisons run by the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northeastern Syria to Baghdad.
The transfer began after a rapid offensive by Syrian government forces against the SDF, which has guarded the IS detainees and the facilities where they were incarcerated for years.
On 29 January, the US brokered a ceasefire deal which set out a phased integration of Kurdish fighters into the central state.
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Iraq hopes to put on trial some of the thousands of detainees, who were held for years in Syria without charges or access to the judicial system.
On the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, Iraq’s foreign minister Fuad Hussein told Reuters discussion with “some Arab and Muslim countries” to take back their citizens had begun.
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“The successful execution of this orderly and secure transfer operation will help prevent an ISIS resurgence in Syria,” said US Army Major General Kevin Lambert, commander of the Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve, the US military’s operational name for the international war against IS.
