They are sentenced to death in Iraq and denounce "inhuman" conditions of detention. Five French jihadists seized the UN Committee against Torture on Wednesday to urge the French state to ensure their consular protection and to repatriate them to France, AFP learned this Thursday from their lawyer.
"French people are subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment in Iraqi prisons," said Nabil Boudi. "France is fully aware of this situation and is not acting accordingly to put an end to it," he said, adding that consular protection should "be granted to all French people without exception". This appeal was filed on behalf of Brahim Nejara, Bilel Kabaoui, Léonard Lopez, Fodil Tahar Aouidate and Mourad Delhomme, sentenced to death in June and detained since October in the high-security center Rassafat.
Constant threats
Their lawyer requests the Geneva-based Committee to "take provisional protective measures in view of the urgency of the situation, in order to avoid irreparable damage being caused to the applicants, victims of an absence of protection on the part of the French authorities ”. He also asked him to condemn France for its refusal to repatriate them and to try them on its soil.
In a letter they managed to send to their families in January, published by Liberation and which AFP was able to consult, Brahim Nejara and Fodil Tahar Aouidate say that they "are faced with incessant threats, verbal and physical from the militias who work In the prison. "Some of us have been tortured and humiliated, the pressure is so strong that there are some among them who have isolated themselves and started to speak on their own and that death is preferable to them", they add. .
Eleven French men on death row
According to them, the French representative who came to visit them in mid-December "replied that he could do nothing" for them "with a smile". "The NGO Human Rights Watch announces in a report the use of methods of" falaka "which consist in hitting suspects on the soles of the feet as well as" waterboarding "or simulated drowning", observes the lawyer in his appeal .
Eleven French nationals captured in Syria were transferred and sentenced to death last year in this country, and three others - including two women - were sentenced to life imprisonment for belonging to Daesh. Last week, the National Consultative Commission for Human Rights (CNCDH), which plays an advisory and proposing role with the French government, estimated that Paris should repatriate these eleven nationals. The subject is sensitive for the executive, several polls have shown the hostility of opinion to the repatriation of jihadists.
Justice
Jihadism: "If we manage to get out of postures, society will be able to respond to this challenge", judge Hugo Micheron, researcher
World
Iraq: Jean-Yves Le Drian discusses the fate of foreign jihadists in Baghdad
- Daesh
- World
- Iraq
- Torture
- jihad