(AP) -- The Iraqi leader also confirmed that the German teenage girl found in Mosul last month is still being held in a Baghdad prison and may face the death penalty.
At the camp near Mosul, Iraqi forces are holding 1,333 women and children who surrendered to Kurdish forces. The families handed themselves over after an Iraqi offensive drove the extremist group from the northern town of Tal Afar, near Mosul at the end of August.
Many of those detained at the camp are not guilty of any crime, al-Abadi said and his government is "in full communication" with their home countries to "find a way to hand them over."
So far, al-Abadi said, Iraq has repatriated fewer than 100 people.
"But we are working very hard to accelerate this. It is not in our interest to keep families and children inside our country when their countries are prepared to take them," he added.
Sixteen-year-old Linda W. ran away last summer from her hometown of Pulsnitz in eastern Germany after communicating with extremists from the Isis group online. She was found in the basement of a home in Mosul's Old City by Iraqi forces, arrested and brought to Baghdad.
Iraqi intelligence officials told the AP the girl allegedly worked with the Isis group's police force.
Al-Abadi said Iraq's judiciary will decide if the teen will face the death penalty.
"You know teenagers under certain laws, they are accountable for their actions especially if the act is a criminal activity when it amounts to killing innocent people," Al-Abadi said.
The German teen is being held in a prison at Baghdad's airport together with other foreign women found in Mosul, including citizens from Belgium, France, Syria and Iran. Hundreds more non-Iraqi women with Isis links and suspected of carrying out terrorist attacks are being held at a prison in the Mosul area, Iraqi officials told the AP earlier this week.
Also this week, Baghdad's central criminal court sentenced a Russian national to death by hanging for his membership in the Isis group.
The individual was tried under Iraq's anti-terrorism law and confessed to carrying out "terrorist operations" against Iraqi security forces since 2015, said Abdul-Sattar Bayrkdar, spokesman for Iraq's supreme judicial council.
(Photo: AP)