BAGHDAD - The French government has come under criticism from human rights advocates as Iraqi terrorism courts completed the trials of 11 French citizens and one French resident, sentencing all of them to death for support of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria group.
"You don't have a real examination of what the defendants did," Ms Wille said."Some of them were war criminals, but you have a trial and conviction and sentencing without anyone finding out what war crimes they were implicated in." But French government officials said the trials had been fair and implied that there could be more cases to come. There are some 450 French citizens in camps in Syria who joined the ISIS group, according to France's Foreign Ministry.
The French defendants were captured in Syria and transferred to Iraq by US-backed Kurdish forces that have been fighting the ISIS group in Syria.