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The court of Baghdad where were sentenced to death eleven French jihadists. SABAH ARAR / AFP

Did France illegally organize the transfer of French jihadists from Syria to Iraq, where they were then sentenced to death? This is what the United Nations is asking today, which has just sent a letter to the French government on this subject.

Earlier this summer, eleven Frenchmen who joined the Islamic State group were sentenced to death in Baghdad during a trial described as unfair. In a letter to the government, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Agnès Callamard, deplores this transfer and condemnation that she considers contrary to international law.

Agnès Callamard denounces the transfer, at the end of January, of these French fighters of the Islamic State group. She wonders if France could be directly involved: " If France was involved in these transfers, then it violated an absolute norm in international law which is that a state that has abolished the death penalty can not under any circumstances transfer an individual to a country where the death penalty continues to be applied. Where is the justice process ? Where is the truth process ? "

Maitre Nabil Boudi, the lawyer of some of these Frenchmen transferred to Iraq, hopes that this intervention of the United Nations will shed light on the unclear circumstances that led to the death sentence of his clients:

" This intervention is interesting for us because we hope to have the official position of the French state since the government will have 60 days to respond. And if France does not respond within 60 days, Ms. Callamard's mail will become public. And we will see through this mail all the criticisms that are issued by the United Nations to the French government . "

Mr Nabil Boudi already knows that he intends to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.