US demands Europe allows 600 ISIS widows to return - ‘Take them back!'

06.11.2018

A woman and child in a Kurdish detention camp for ISIS suspects (Image: GETTY)

JIHADI brides who left Europe to marry ISIS fighters wreaking death and destruction across large swathes of Syria and Iraq should now be taken back by their home countries, according to US counter-terrorism chiefs.

More than 650 European citizens, many of them children, have been held by US-backed Kurdish militias in three detention camps in Syria since ISIS was defeated last year.

The Kurds say it is not their job to prosecute or hold the radicalised women indefinitely but the women and children are also causing a headache for officials in Europe.

The US, Russia and Indonesia have taken custody of some of the detainees but now want Europe to do the same - fearing the camps are providing fertile breeding grounds for a new generation of militants.

One senior US counter-terrorism official said: "We are telling European governments: 'Take your people back, prosecute them. They are more of a threat to you here than back home’.”

But there is little sympathy for ISIS families in European capitals targeted by terrorists in a spate of deadly attacks and diplomats insist they are unable to act in a region where Kurdish control is not internationally recognised.

For the children it may be that their fate is determined by which country their mother came from.

One senior European diplomat said: "Absolutely nobody wants them.

"How can you sell to the public that you are proactively helping the families of your enemies?"

Nevertheless, growing concern over abandoning hundreds of children with a claim to EU citizenship is pushing governments to quietly exploring ways of bringing them back.

Robert Bertholee, head of the Dutch AIVD intelligence agency, said: "The threat emanating from children of the caliphate is really an unprecedented, invisible and very complex one - one that we have to deal with right now.

"These children are victims above all."

French officials have said they will work to repatriate children but not their mothers.

Intelligence sources said other EU members states were in talks with Kurdish authorities but these are complicated because the Kurds want governments to take back all their nationals, not just minors.

Nadim Houry, director of Human Rights Watch's counter-terrorism programme, gave a grim description of the camps where diseases like tuberculosis are rampant and food, baby milk and medical care are in short supply.

He said: “There is no capacity. Keeping them there is not a long-term viable option.

"You don't build counter-terrorism policy on public opinion."

Kurdish officials say the foreigners in their custody comprise 900 ISIS fighters, 500 women and more than 1,000 children.

Western security sources say numbers will grow as coalition forces clear remaining pockets of ISIS territory,

Women made up almost 20 percent of 5,900 Western Europeans who joined ISIS, according to the London-based International Centre for the Study of Radicalism.

They had at least 566 babies abroad and only a few have returned.

The children are seen both as victims and threats and officials warn bringing them back to schools and homes in Europe is fraught with difficulties.

Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), said: "I understand the sensitivities in countries that suffered from terrorist attacks.

“But we still hope to facilitate humane solutions for kids.”

Muriel Domenach, who leads efforts against radicalisation in France, said: "The debate must stop oscillating between denial and panic.

“These are neither kids like any other, nor are they time bombs."

Source: Link