Abbas al-Maliki, a lawyer for seven French nationals sentenced by an Iraqi court, said the men would challenge the rulings in the Court of Cassation.
The court in Baghdad sentenced six of the men to life in prison and a seventh to 15 years on Tuesday. The sentencing took place on 27 October.
The presiding judge said Iraq’s counterterrorism law applied because the defendants had joined Islamic State and spread fear. The court imposed life terms rather than the death penalty because the defendants were young.
The man given 15 years was aged 23. The brief does not identify the men, describe their alleged roles in Islamic State, or say what evidence was presented to the court.
The seven were among 47 French Islamic State suspects moved from detention facilities in northeast Syria to Iraq last year, under a wider arrangement coordinated by US forces and Iraqi authorities. In January, the United States said it had begun transferring Islamic State detainees from Syria to Iraq because of concerns about the security of detention facilities in northeast Syria after Kurdish-led forces lost control of parts of the region.
Islamic State seized large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014. A US-led coalition and local forces drove the group from its self-declared caliphate in 2019.
Al-Maliki said the seven defendants would appeal their sentences to the Court of Cassation.
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