She and her two children have been living in detention camps in Syria for at least two years. His dream, he says, is for his children, whose father fought for the Islamic State, to go to school in Belgium. is willing to pay the courage to join the militant organization in 2014, if Belgium regains it.
“Maybe they found out that those who need to move from home regret it and need a moment of opportunity,” Van Eetvelde, 43, recently said in a WhatsApp voicemail.
Many European countries have been reluctant to allow others connected to the Islamic State to return, however, some, such as Belgium and Finland, are now listening to the recommendation of security experts and rights teams who say repatriation is the safest option.
“Europe has long criticized the United States for Guantanamo Bay, but now you have a Guantanamo in the desert,” said Chris Harnisch, a State Department counterterrorism exoficial who organized U. S. repatriation in 2019 and 2020.
Two years after islamic state lost its last territorial settlement in Syria, more than two hundred women from 11 European countries and their 650 young people live in two Syrian camps, Al Hol and Roj, according to figures compiled through Thomas Renard, a researcher at the Egmont Institute, a Brussels-based expert group.
Although Europeans make up a small fraction of the other 60,000 people detained in the camps, most of whom are Iraqis and Syrians, European governments are facing increasing pressure to bring adults to trial amid argument that countries ” violate their commitment to human rights. ”
Security experts, human rights teams and lawyers from those who have visited Islamic State territories recognize that European governments face valid security concerns, as well as dynamic policies in countries that are concerned about terrorist attacks, but a growing number of government officials and intelligence agencies say leaving European citizens in Syria carry greater risks , and add that they can simply register for terrorist teams that target Europe.
Countries such as the United States, Kazakhstan and Turkey have repatriated many of their own to pursue them and, in some cases, reintegrate them into society.
Kurdish leaders in the region overseeing the camps have not prosecuted women, whose roles under Islamic State regime are sometimes still unclear, and because the administration is not recognized around the world, no prosecution would lift them out of their legal vacuum.
Most European countries say they have no legal responsibility to help their citizens in the camps and that adults who have joined the Islamic State are prosecuted in Iraq and Syria.
However, Belgian Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne said his government would establish the repatriation of thirteen women and their 27 young people in the months after the country’s intelligence announced that Islamic State was gaining strength in the camps. advice “that bringing women and young people to Belgium was the safest option.
A European Union paper this year described Hol’s camp as a “mini-caliphate. “
“A returne will pose a risk, some of them low, some of them very high,” Renard said, adding that returnees can potentially radicalize inmates in criminal attacks or attempts. “However, the consequences of non-repatriation are increasingly outweighing these risks. “. “
Human rights teams say young people have done nothing and suffer from disease, malnutrition and sexual assault, hundreds of others have died and dozens of coronavirus cases have been reported in camps, according to the non-governmental organization Save the Children.
Adolescents who have travelled to Islamic State territories when they were young with their Europe-born mothers, who are most at risk of radicalization, are also of concern. They stay because countries only receive younger ones.
Letta Tayler, Human Rights Watch’s lead counter-terrorism researcher, said European governments are “creating child levels. “She said, “The most desirable are orphans, the least desirable are teenagers. “
Defense organization Reprieve says many in the camps have been trafficked, rape and forced into marriage and domestic servitude.
However, in several European countries, repatriation is still out of the question, said a French intelligence officer who called for anonymity to talk about it. Part of the hesitation, security analysts say, is that repatriated women can simply get gentle criminal sentences or not.
Britain has stripped some 20 women who have joined the Islamic State of British citizenship, prosecuting them in some cases to prevent their return. France has rejected repatriation requests, even when some of the women have started a month-long hunger strike. The Netherlands and Sweden said they may only accept children, but without their mothers.
Van Eetvelde, a former cashier born near Antwerp in northern Belgium, traveled to Islamic State territory with her husband in 2014 and now, in the Roj camp, hopes to return to Belgium for her and her 3- and 5-year-old children. . .
Most of the time she remains isolated from the world, and even her lawyer, Mohamed Ozdemir, said she had not been to touch her in recent months. Mobile phones are not allowed, so Van Eetvelde played the New York Times via voice messages sent through other phones from the woman at the camp that the Times played through the woman’s circle of relatives and lawyer.
In January, a Belgian court found her guilty in absentia for the activities of a terrorist organization, Ozdemir said, and sentenced her to five years in prison.
Van Quickenborne said that all women wishing to return to Belgium deserve to prove that they do not need to harm the country. “If they haven’t distanced the the ideology of IS, they’ll stay there,” he said, somewhere else. call for islamic state.
The repatriation plan is likely to put pressure on neighboring France, which has the largest contingent of European citizens in camps and prisons in Iraq and Syria. for the repatriation of those who have gone to wage-earning jihad.
Although France has hosted 35 young people from the camps as the case may be, a hundred French women and their two hundred young people remain most frequently in the Roj camp, according to Jean-Charles Brisard, director of the Centre for Analysis. terrorism.
France was to repatriate at least 160 of them in early 2019, according to intelligence documents presented through the Libération newspaper this spring and noticed through the Times this year, but the scenario in the camps is too unstable, the French intelligence official said. the plan has been abandoned.
“We believe this is going to happen and dominoes may have started to fall with other European countries,” said Harnisch, a former US counter-terrorism official. “But the French government disconnected the plug at 11th hour. “
Today, a growing number of European countries are taking action.
In Denmark, the government announced this month that it would repatriate 3 women and 14 young people. Germany and Finland repatriated five women and 18 young people in December, and a spokesman for Germany’s Foreign Ministry said last month that the country is operating “at full speed” to adapt young people in camps whose mothers are German citizens.
In Britain, Conservative lawmakers have called for the repatriation of some British citizens, arguing that it would be safer to prosecute them in the country than to leave them in the fields.
The parents of a French woman in the camps have filed a complaint against France with the European Court of Human Rights for the repatriation of her and her children, and 3 French lawyers have asked the International Criminal Court to read about whether the country’s policies make President Emmanuel Macron complicit in war crimes.
A French woman who went on hunger strike at the roj camp said there was no running water and that many others had trouble breathing. (The Times does not publish its call because it says it has won death threats from Islamic State supporters who oppose his return. France. ) “It’s very difficult to see doctors and dentists, there are no medicines,” she said, adding that French women were looking to return “to be tried, imprisoned. “
Jussi Tanner, a Finnish diplomat in repatriation rate to his country, said the return of women and young people is not a question of “yes, but when and how. “
“Repatriating them as temporarily as you can imagine is bigger from a security point of view than pretending that the challenge disappears when we look the other way,” he said. “You can leave them there, but they’ll come back anyway. “
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