A British ISIS bride and her son have been repatriated to the UK from a refugee camp in north-east Syria – the first Britons to be allowed to return to their homeland since the war against the terrorist organization ended.
The mother and son could potentially mark a change in policy from the UK government, which has so far refused to accept British nationals who ran away to join ISIS on anything other than a ‘grassroots’ basis.
“British officials have facilitated the repatriation of two British nationals from #Syria,” wrote Jonathan Hargreaves, the UK’s Special Envoy for Syria.
“In line with our long-standing policy, we examine each request for consular assistance in Syria on a case-by-case basis, taking into account all relevant considerations, including national security.”
Activists welcomed the move by human rights NGO Reprieve, saying the woman was “a victim of human trafficking who was brought to Syria as a young girl by a male relative” and that “she and her child suffered extreme trauma”.
Details of the case are vague, the woman’s name and the camp where she was being held have been withheld, and the announcement was made in the middle of the night. Reprieve helped protect her identity.
The Atma refugee camp on the Turkish-Syrian border. For the first time since the end of the ground war with ISIS, a British national has been allowed to return to Britain with her son
Children gather outside their tents at al-Hol camp, home to families of members of the Islamic State group, in Hasakeh province, Syria, May 1, 2021. The repatriation of the mother and son could potentially mark a policy change by the British government
Women walk through the al-Hol camp, which houses around 60,000 refugees, including families and supporters of the Islamic State group, many of them foreign nationals
Up to 60 Britons, including 35 children, are believed to be being held in squalid detention camps in Syria set up for families of ISIS militants captured or killed.
Most of the former ISIS supporters were captured by Syrian Kurdish forces in the final days of the ground war in early 2019 and held indefinitely in sprawling camps like al-Hawl in northeastern Syria.
Their fate has been the subject of much debate over whether to bring them home or let them wither in Syria.
Matters have been further complicated by the fact that the British government has revoked the citizenship of some of those who traveled to the Middle East to join ISIS, including Shamima Begum, who fled her homeland in 2015.
It is argued that many of these individuals would pose a security risk should they be allowed to return to Britain, having run away to join an enemy group at war with Britain.
But many of these individuals are or were very young when they ran away, and they have children who grew up in the camps or know little more than life in war-torn Syria.
Conditions in these camps are so poor and unsanitary, and life so miserable, that some argue it is a “cruel or unusual punishment” to leave British citizens there.
In 2021, Human Rights Watch estimated that 43,000 foreigners — including men, women and children — with ties to ISIS were being held in similar conditions without trial.
A Syrian boy carries a bucket of water at the Sahlah al-Banat camp in the countryside of Raqa in northern Syria, September 19, 2022
A Syrian girl carries a water container in the run-down Sahlah al-Banat refugee camp in the countryside of Raqa in northern Syria on September 19
Other countries have already slowly begun to repatriate their citizens, with Australia announcing it is repatriating about 60 people, 20 women and 40 children, from the camps.
Meanwhile, Finland was censured yesterday by the UN regulator for violating the rights of Finnish children who have been languishing for years in life-threatening conditions in Syrian camps for family members of suspected jihadists.
In the findings, which echo an earlier ruling on France’s responsibility to French children trapped in the camps, the committee said that “prolonged detention of child victims in life-threatening conditions amounts to inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.”
The committee, whose 18 independent experts are tasked with overseeing the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, released the findings after examining a case submitted on behalf of six Finnish children currently living in Al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria to be detained.
Since their relatives brought the case to the committee in 2019, three of the children have been able to leave the camp on their own with their mother and eventually returned to Finland.
“The remaining three child victims, currently aged between five and six, are still being held in closed camps in a war-like area,” the committee said.
The petition from her relatives also mentioned 33 other Finnish children who were being held in the camp without access to legal counsel.
A Syrian girl washes clothes in a pool of water in Sahlah al-Banat camp
Syrian children sit in front of a tent in Camp Sahlah al-Banat
Al-Hol is home to around 56,000 people and is the largest of a series of camps in the region housing relatives of suspected jihadists, mostly women and children.
Keeping these women in the camps would also risk further radicalization, some experts argue, since the camps are ruled by a hard core of ISIS supporters who dictate conditions in the camp.
Shamima Begum appealed again to be allowed to return to the UK in July, claiming she could be a “voice against radicalisation”.
The 22-year-old lost his British citizenship in 2019. Now she wants to “set an example” to warn other Britons of the dangers of turning to extremism.
Begum, who left the UK in 2015 with friends Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana, is now living in Al-Roj detention center in Syria, where she was captured.
ISIS bride Shamima Begum (pictured) appealed again to be allowed to return to the UK in July, claiming she could be a “voice against radicalisation”.
Speaking to iNews from inside the camp while awaiting a trial by the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces, she insisted she wanted to be “as British as possible” but acknowledged she expects to live the rest of her life will spend in Syria.
Begum’s parents were born in Bangladesh. She left school in Bethnal Green, east London, to travel to Syria and join the Islamic State.
There she married an IS fighter and gave birth to three children, all of whom died young. Her youngest child died in 2019 in the prison camp in north-eastern Syria.
She has previously attempted to reinstate her British citizenship but was unsuccessful in her Supreme Court application to return to the UK and plead her case in person.
The Supreme Court ruled she could not return to the UK to appeal the decision on national security grounds. The law states that a person’s citizenship can be revoked if it is deemed to be in the public interest.
