A Iraqi court Monday sentenced to death two more French nationals for joining the Islamic State group, leaving all 11 Frenchmen transferred from Syria facing the gallows and potentially opening the door for other cases.

Bilel Kabaoui, 32, and Mourad Delhomme, 41, join nine other French citizens and a Tunisian national already on death row after trials over the past week. They have 30 days to appeal the sentences.

The group was handed over to Iraqi authorities early this year by a US-backed force in Syria which expelled IS from its last bastion.

On the stand in Baghdad, Delhomme said he was "known within IS as the one who never pledged allegiance or worked" for the ultra-extremist group.

For an hour, the man who went by Abu Ayman explained to the judge in great detail how he entered Syria to save the wife of a friend taken captive by rebels after her husband died fighting in the ranks of IS.

Although he denied it at trial, Delhomme told investigators he joined the Tariq Ibn Ziyad brigade, an IS unit described by US officials as "a European foreign terrorist fighter cell".

The group was charged with carrying out attacks in Iraq and Syria and planning others in Paris and Brussels.

Iraq has convicted more than 500 foreign men and women of joining IS since the start of 2018.

Its courts have condemned many to life in prison and others to death, although no foreign IS members have yet been executed.

Kabaoui, for his part, pleaded the error of youth.

"Five years ago I was super stupid. I was convinced that I could leave Syria when I wanted to," he told the judge.

He claimed he asked his family in France to contact French intelligence to find a way for him to return with his wife and three children -- it was on that advice that he surrendered to US-backed Kurdish forces in Syria in late 2017.

- 'A historic risk' -

France has long insisted its adult citizens captured in Iraq or Syria must face trial before local courts, while stressing its opposition to capital punishment.

French government spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye reiterated Sunday that officials were intervening "at the highest level" in the cases.

On Sunday, France's state secretary at the interior ministry Laurent Nunez said "other (French citizens) could be tried" in Iraq.

"I cannot give you the exact numbers but we will have others," he said.

Some 450 French nationals accused of links to IS are currently detained in Syria.

Iraq offered in April to put on trial hundreds of accused foreign jihadists in Baghdad in exchange for millions of dollars, potentially solving a legal conundrum for Western governments but also sparking rights concerns.

A group of prominent French lawyers said on Monday that the execution of French jihadists on death row would be a disgrace for France.

"We have taken a historic risk, which, if it is realised, will leave an indelible stain on the mandate of (President) Emmanuel Macron," said the lawyers, including some of the country's best known legal professionals such as William Bourdon, Henri Leclerc and Vincent Brengarth.

It would mean allowing a "legal assassination which is now proscribed by the majority of countries on the planet," said the open letter, published on the website of radio station Franceinfo.

Human Rights Watch, for its part, has accused Iraqi interrogators of "using a range of torture techniques... which would not leave lasting marks on the person's body".

It also condemned France's "outsourcing" of trials of IS suspects to "abusive justice systems" and criticised Iraq's "routine failure... to credibly investigate torture allegations".

Iraqi law provides for the death penalty, which is carried out by hanging, for anyone joining a "terrorist group" -- even those who did not take up arms.

Who are the French jihadists sentenced to death in Iraq?
Baghdad (AFP) June 3, 2019 - Iraq has handed death sentences to 11 French nationals and a Tunisian for joining the Islamic State group who were detained by US-backed fighters in neighbouring Syria and transferred to Baghdad early this year.

The suspects, who have 30 days to appeal, were tried according to Iraq's counterterrorism law -- which can dole out the death penalty to anyone who joined a "terrorist" group, even if they were not explicitly fighting.

Below are profiles of the 12 detainees.

- Leonard Lopez -

Even before IS, 32-year-old Leonard Lopez was known to French authorities for his activity on Francophone jihadist website Ansar al-Haqq in the 2000s.

In July 2015, the native Parisian travelled with his wife and two children to IS-held Mosul in northern Iraq before entering Syria, according to French investigators.

Lopez, known as Abu Ibrahim al-Andalusi after joining IS, was sentenced in absentia in 2018 for his involvement in Ansar al-Haqq but is also wanted on other charges.

He co-founded the jihadist-linked Sanabil Association, dissolved in late 2016 by French authorities.

"All those who have been directly or indirectly involved in the attacks since January 2015 have been directly or indirectly linked to Sanabil," authorities said at the time.

Lopez was sentenced to death on May 26.

- Kevin Gonot -

Kevin Gonot, 32, entered Syria through Turkey to join IS rival and former Al-Qaeda branch Al-Nusra Front, according to a "confession" published by Iraq's judiciary.

He then pledged allegiance to IS, fighting under the name Abu Sufyan, before being arrested in Syria with his mother, wife, and half-brother Thomas Collange, 31.

He said his father was killed in IS's de facto Syrian capital, Raqa.

Gonot was sentenced to death on May 26.

He told the court he "regretted" going to Syria, where he was wounded in the Kurdish city of Kobane in 2015 and later transferred to IS's de facto Iraqi capital Mosul for hospitalisation.

He previously told investigators he fought in both countries.

Gonot is married to a niece of brothers Fabien and Jean-Michel Clain, who notoriously claimed the attacks of November 2015 Paris attacks and were killed in Baghouz -- IS's last bastion in east Syria.

French courts have already sentenced Gonot in absentia to nine years in prison, according to the French Terrorism Analysis Center (CAT).

- Fodil Tahar Aouidate -

Fodil Tahar Aouidate, 32, was sentenced to death on June 2.

Described as violent and ready to die for IS's extremist ideology, he made a first trip to Syria in 2013 and returned in 2014 with 22 members of his family to join IS, according to the French judiciary.

Originally from the city of Roubaix in northern France, he was registered as a "fighter" on a IS document presented to the court.

After 130 people were killed in IS's 2015 Paris attacks, Aouidate appeared in a video saying it was his "great pleasure and joy to see these unbelievers suffer as we suffer here".

Authorities also linked him to Belgium's Salafist movement, including the Paris attacks mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud.

France convicted two of Aouidate's sisters for "financing terrorism" for sending 15,000 euros to relatives in Syria.

- Mustapha Merzoughi -

A former French army soldier, Mustapha Merzoughi told Iraqi interrogators he joined IS after "research on social media and websites by IS and Al-Nusra Front".

Fighting under the name Abu Omran al-Faranssi, he is originally from Toulouse -- the hometown of the Clain brothers.

He travelled to Syria after quitting his job and getting divorced in the northeastern French city of Metz.

In Syria, he created a new family with five children.

He underwent "compulsory religious and military training" in Mosul and was handed a "Kalashnikov and a monthly salary of $200" to serve as a doctor.

Merzoughi told investigators he "pledged allegiance to a masked IS leader in Mosul", claiming that many senior jihadists worried about being "recognised or identified by foreign fighters they feared were spies".

He was sentenced to death on May 27.

- Yassin Sakkam -

Yassin Sakkam, 29, left France in late 2014 to fight with IS, posting online pictures of himself carrying arms and speaking to multiple media outlets about IS.

Originally from the southern city of Lunel, he was sentenced to death in Baghdad on May 29.

Prosecutors said he joined the Tariq Ibn Ziyad brigade, an IS unit described by US officials as "a European foreign terrorist fighter cell".

Recruited by a Moroccan, Sakkam said he pledged allegiance to an Egyptian IS member and volunteered to be a front-line fighter.

Under the nickname Abu Salman al-Faranssi, he said he fought in battles against the Free Syrian Army rebel group.

He later grew disillusioned and tried to flee, "but it was hard to find a smuggler because I was not a civilian but a terrorist", he told the judge.

France has been seeking his arrest since 2016 and Kurdish authorities detained him in Syria in 2017.

- Karam el-Harchaoui -

Karam el-Harchaoui, 33, was sentenced to death on May 28.

He left for Syria in 2014 from Belgium and fought under the name Abu Abdallah.

According to Belgian daily HLN, his younger brother and their Belgian wives were also IS members.

The slender man, whose face was freshly shaven at trial, married two Belgian women he met on Facebook, bringing them both to Syria.

Harchaoui turned himself over in January 2018 to US-backed Kurdish forces in Syria after his brother, also an IS member, was killed in a bombing.

- Salim Machou -

Salim Machou, 41, was also a member of the infamous Tariq Ibn Ziyad brigade, which US officials say carried out attacks in Iraq and Syria and planned others in Paris and Brussels.

He was sentenced to death on May 26.

- Vianney Ouraghi -

Vianney Ouraghi, 28, left France for Syria in 2013 and joined Al-Nusra before jumping to IS when the latter declared its "caliphate" in 2014, according to CAT.

The son of a French mother and a Franco-Algerian father, he was sentenced to death on June 3.

Sporting thick glasses and a light-brown goatee at court, he spoke to the judge in classical Arabic, which he picked up during studies in Cairo.

Married to two Syrian women, Ouraghi pleaded that he was only an "IS administrative officer" in charge of "widows and families" of the jihadist group.

But the judge countered with an IS administrative document listing him as a "fighter".

- Brahim Nejara -

Brahim Nejara, a 33-year-old from Meyzieu near the city of Lyon in eastern France, was involved in IS's foreign fighter operations, according to CAT.

He helped foreign fighters join IS in Syria, persuaded one of his brothers to commit an attack in France, and was associated with Foued Mohamed-Aggad, one of the suicide bombers at the Bataclan theatre in the 2015 Paris attacks.

He was sentenced to death on May 28.

- Bilel Kabaoui -

This 32-year-old hails from Sevres, around Paris, and travelled to IS territory in the summer of 2014, according to CAT.

Sentenced to death on June 3, he pleaded with the judge that a friend had mislead him and told him he could leave Syria at any time.

"Five years ago I was super stupid. I was convinced that I could leave Syria when I wanted to," he said, adding that IS had declared him medically unfit to fight due to asthma.

He said he had been a "health-care aide" in the northern Syrian city of Manbij, and a jailer in one of the jihadists feared courts, which routinely dealt out corporal punishments and summary executions.

Kabaoui surrendered to US-backed Kurdish forces in October 2017 on the advice of French intelligence, he said.

He claimed he had asked his family in France to contact French intelligence to find a way for him to return with his wife and three children.

- Mourad Delhomme -

Mourad Delhomme, 41, is of Algerian origin and was arrested last year in Syria's eastern Deir Ezzor, according to the CAT.

Labelled a "jihadist veteran" by French intelligence, he was sentenced to death on June 3.

On the stand in Baghdad, Delhomme said he was "known within IS as the one who never pledged allegiance or worked" for the ultra-extremist group.

He told the judge he entered Syria to save the wife of a friend taken captive by rebels after her husband died fighting in the ranks of IS.

Delhomme told interrogators before the trial he joined the Tariq Ibn Ziyad brigade.

- Mohammed Berriri -

The youngest in the group, 24-year old Tunisian Mohammed Berriri was first presented as a Frenchman. He was sentenced to death on May 29.

After leaving the French city of Nice by car, he arrived to Syria when he was 20.

After fighting under the name Abu Abdallah al-Tounssi, he told the court: "I regret joining IS but I don't regret going to Syria, because there I opened by eyes."

After serving three years as a "border guard" of the jihadists' self-proclaimed "caliphate", he told the judge he obtained a written permission from IS to leave the fight -- but then unexplicably lost the document.

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Nine French jihadists now on death row in Iraq
Baghdad (AFP) June 2, 2019
Nine French jihadists are now on death row in Iraq after a court sentenced two more to death on Sunday for joining the Islamic State group, rejecting a claim of torture. Fodil Tahar Aouidate and Vianney Ouraghi were among 11 French citizens and one Tunisian handed over to Iraqi authorities in January by a US-backed force fighting the jihadist group in Syria. Described as violent and ready to die for the extremist IS ideology, Aouidate first appeared in court on May 27 but a judge delayed his tri ... read more