British ISIS jihadis face being sentenced to DEATH by Iraqi courts after being captured in Mosul
Iraqi authorities are sending around 100 suspected terrorists to court every month
BRITISH Jihadists captured in the besieged city of Mosul face being handed the death sentences by the Iraqi courts.
The Iraqi authorities have a list of 40,000 suspected ISIS members of all nationalities.
And they are now trying around 100 suspected terrorists a month.
Those convicted of crimes like executions are handed death sentences, whereas convicted fighters are given life.
Suspects are being kept in makeshift prisons in houses and mosques around Qayyarah, 40 miles south of Mosul.
Related stories
The Qayyarah terrorist investigations court cannot keep up with the growing number of detainees. It has heard more than 150 cases since it opened in late September, and Judge Abu Iman says he is ruling on up to eight a day.
“I see some in here as young as 16 and some as old as 60,” he said. “Some are easier to decide than others.
“We have to differentiate between supporters and fighters,” he says, sitting behind a desk in the house’s stone-cold reception room, which has been without electricity since they moved in.
“So, if someone offered Daesh help in some way that would be different to fighting for them.
“As examples, I heard the case of a young man who had worked as a cook for the fighters as he was poor and needed money to feed his family.
So far all the defendants have been Iraqi nationals, but as the army pushes further into Mosul they are sure to come across some of the many thousand foreign recruits believed to be holed up inside the city.
He warns that the foreigners, which are thought to include at least 100 Britons, would be tried “just the same as locals”.
“They have committed crimes against Iraqis so they should face local law,” he said.
But one British Jihadi fighting for the crumbling Islamic State says he will never be taken alive.
Ex-Morrisons security guard Omar Hussain – who is on the frontline in Syria – says he will die in the desert rather than be taken prisoner.
The terror group is losing its grip on the Iraqi stronghold of Mosul and Syrian forces are planning a major offensive against IS’s so-called capital of Raqqa.
But bespectacled Hussain, from High Wycombe, Bucks, said: “Martyrdom is my only option and I don't vouch for anything else.”
The 30-year-old said he travelled to Syria for the “love of jihad and “the honour to die sacrificing my life for God's sake”.