BAGHDAD (AP) — Baghdad will prosecute and try militants from the Islamic State group who are being transferred from prisons and detention camps in neighboring Syria to Iraq under a U.S.-brokered deal, Iraq said Sunday.
The announcement from Iraq’s highest judicial body came after a meeting of top security and political officials who discussed the ongoing transfer of some 9,000 IS detainees who have been held in Syria since the militant group's collapse there in 2019.
The need to move them came after Syria's nascent government forces last month routed Syrian Kurdish-led fighters — once top U.S. allies in the fight against IS — from areas of northeastern Syria they had controlled for years and where they had been guarding camps holding IS prisoners.
Syrian troops seized the sprawling al-Hol camp — housing thousands, mostly families of IS militants — from the Kurdish-led force, which withdrew as part of a ceasefire. Troops last Monday also took control of a prison in the northeastern town of Shaddadeh, from where some IS detainees had escaped during the fighting. Syrian state media later reported that many were recaptured.
Now, the clashes between the Syrian military and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, sparked fears of IS activating its sleeper cells in those areas and of IS detainees escaping. The Syrian government under its initial agreement with the Kurds said it would take responsibility of the IS prisoners.
Baghdad has been particularly worried that escaped IS detainees would regroup and threaten Iraq’s security and its side of the vast Syria-Iraq border.
Once in Iraq, IS prisoners accused of terrorism will be investigated by security forces and tried in domestic courts, Iraq's Supreme Judicial Council said.
The U.S. military started the transfer process on Friday with the first IS prisoners moved from Syria to Iraq. On Sunday, another 125 IS prisoners were transferred, according to two Iraqi security officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
So far, 275 prisoners have made it to Iraq, a process that officials say has been slow as the U.S. military has been transporting them by air.
Both Damascus and Washington have welcomed Baghdad's offer to have the prisoners transferred to Iraq.
Iraq’s parliament will meet later on Sunday to discuss the ongoing developments in Syria, where its government forces are pushing to boost their presence along the border.
The fighting between the Syrian government and the SDF has mostly halted with a ceasefire that was recently extended. According to Syria's Defense Ministry, the truce was extended to support the ongoing transfer operation by U.S. forces.
The Islamic State group was defeated in Iraq in 2017, and in Syria two years later, but IS sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in both countries. As a key U.S. ally in the region, the SDF played a major role in defeating IS.
During the battles against IS, thousands of extremists and tens of thousands of women and children linked to them were taken and held in prisons and at the al-Hol camp. The sprawling al-Hol camp hosts thousands of women and children.
Last year, U.S. troops and their partner SDF fighters detained more than 300 IS militants in Syria and killed over 20. An ambush in December by IS militants killed two U.S. soldiers and one American civilian interpreter in Syria.
Chehayeb reported from Beirut.
Men sit inside a holding room at a prison in the town of Shaddadeh, northeastern Syria, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026, after Syrian authorities said they were among Islamic State group members who escaped from the facility a day earlier and were later detained by Syrian government forces. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
An aerial view shows Shaddadeh prison complex in the town of Shaddadeh, northeastern Syria, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026, a day after Syria's Interior Ministry said Islamic State group members escaped from the facility during clashes with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — USA Luge men's doubles slider Zack DiGregorio is a New England Patriots fan. Makes sense: He's from Massachusetts, his mother has worked for the Patriots for more than two decades and the Patriots are about to play in the Super Bowl for the 10th time since he was born.
He doesn't miss games. Especially not big games. And games get no bigger than the Super Bowl.
Welcome to a Super-sized Olympic dilemma: What does one do when football's biggest game collides with the Milan Cortina Games? In Italy, the game between the Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks kicks off Monday at 12:30 a.m., a time when Olympians like DiGregorio should be asleep and not exhausting themselves before taking part in their own Super Bowl of sliding.
“If I happen to wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom," DiGregorio said, “I may be tuning in.”
He won't be the only one in Italy with a gaze locked on a TV, laptop or phone screen in the wee hours of Monday morning. There are 15 members of this U.S. Olympic team from Massachusetts, eight more from Washington and who knows how many else with reason to watch.
Gold-medal pursuits may be forgotten, for a few hours anyway, to watch two teams play for a silver trophy. And yes, some Olympians with major rooting interests in this game say they'll go without and make sure their sleep cycles aren't interrupted.
“I’m not going to be able to watch because that’s going to be real late here," said curling Olympian Korey Dropkin, who was born in Massachusetts. “But as my form of support, I’m going to wear my Pats jersey to bed.”
Then again, some athletes at the Olympics won't have to stay up to watch. It seems a few already are somehow aware of the outcome.
“It’ll be the middle of the night here so I think we will see the score afterwards," said short track speed skater Corinne Stoddard, a Seattle native. "We don’t want to be up all night. But the Seahawks are going to win. I don’t have any doubt in my mind about that one. We’ve proved it all year. So, good luck, Patriots.”
Women's hockey player Alex Carpenter — a dual citizen of sorts for this Super Bowl, a Massachusetts native who plays for the PWHL's Seattle Torrent — has a game on Monday, so she said she'll just “check the score in the morning.”
And Boston Bruins star Charlie McAvoy — part of the U.S. men's hockey team in Milan — told NBC he might just go to bed really early Sunday night.
“That could look like a 5 a.m. wake-up to catch the second half,” McAvoy said.
The collision of a Super Bowl and an Olympics is a fun headache for some. For the Olympic movement, it represents a bigger issue.
Sunday (or Monday in Italy, technically) will mark only the second time that the Super Bowl and the Winter Games will be happening on the same day. They collided in 2022 as well, and with NFL seasons now several weeks longer than they were a generation or two ago these conflicts are probably going to keep happening.
“You’ve got big events all working and overlapping,” International Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry told the Olympic Information Service coming into the Milan Cortina Games. “So, the next part of the question is, when are we all going to sit down as one big sporting family and have these conversations around how we prioritize, how do we talk, how do we make space for each of us so that we’re also not competing against each other?”
For now, those involved will just enjoy having two big things to root for at basically the same time.
Mark Henderson's daughter is U.S. Olympic freestyle skier Grace Henderson, who is scheduled to compete at 10:30 a.m. Monday.
That's a few hours after the Super Bowl ends. Prediction: Mark Henderson is going to be tired.
He found a bar in Livigno, Italy that has agreed — with the help of some cash — to stay open until the end of the Super Bowl to ensure the Henderson clan of about 15 to 20 people have enough food and drink past the scheduled 2 a.m. closing time.
“I said, ‘What would it take to stay open a few more hours?’" Mark Henderson said. "I named a price and they took it. Food and drink included.”
Krista DiGregorio, Zack's mom, is looking for a similar establishment. She probably would have been at the Super Bowl this year — she works in the suites at Gillette Stadium, and that part-time role basically funded her son's costly luge career as he was becoming an Olympian.
Her plan: Find a bar that'll stay open in Cortina d'Ampezzo.
“We’ll beg, if need be,” she said. “I am not above begging or perhaps sliding a few euros in their direction.”
The main focus for the DiGregorio clan right now is, of course, the Olympics. Zack has his Drake Maye jersey with him. The family's rental home has all the necessary fan touches: more Pats jerseys, signs, banners, even a towel with the team's “We all we got, we all we need” theme.
But the way Krista DiGregorio sees it, she already got her championship parade Friday night when her son was in the Olympic opening ceremony and got to march with teammates through the streets of Cortina.
A Super Bowl win would be wonderful. Either way, it's been a pretty good season for her.
“Unreal. Unreal,” Krista DiGregorio said. “I didn’t anticipate being as emotional as I was at that parade. To be there and see how happy he is, how happy his teammates are, the people he’s grown up with and gotten close to, it’s been wonderful.”
AP Sports Writers Joseph Wilson and James Ellingsworth contributed to this story.
AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
United States' Korey Dropkin delivers the stone during a curling mixed doubles round robin session against Britain at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
United States' Cory Thiesse and Korey Dropkin look on during the mixed doubles round robin phase of the curling competition against Britain, at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
