Captured in Syria by a US-backed force fighting the jihadists, they are the first French ISIS members to receive the death sentence in Iraq, where they were transferred for a trial. Kevin Gonot, Leonard Lopez and Salim Machou have just 30 days to appeal this sentence. One court official, who declined to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the media: “They were sentenced to execution after it was proven that they were members of the terrorist Islamic State organisation.”
Iraqi courts have placed hundreds of foreigners on trial, condemning many to life in prison and others to death, although no foreign Isis members have yet been executed.
Gonot fought for ISIS before being arrested in Syria with his mother, wife and half-brother. He has also been sentenced in absentia by a French court to nine years in prison, according to the French Terrorism Analysis Centre.
Machou was a member of the Tariq ibn Ziyad brigade which carried out attacks in Iraq and Syria and planned others in Paris and Brussels, according to US officials.
Lopez, from Paris, travelled with his wife and two children to ISIS-held Mosul in northern Iraq before entering Syria, French investigators say.
Human rights groups have accused Iraqi authorities of inconsistencies in the judicial process and flawed trials, leading to unfair convictions.
The country remains in the top five “executioner” nations in the world, according to an Amnesty International report in April.
The number of death sentences issued by Iraqi courts more than quadrupled between 2017 and 2018, to at least 271.
But only 52 were actually carried out in 2018, according to Amnesty, compared with 125 the year before.
Analysts have also warned that prisons in Iraq have in the past acted as “academies” for future fighters, including ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.