When Hoda Muthana set out from the US to Syria to join the terrorist organization "Islamic State," she posted a picture on Twitter showing her American passport. "There'll be a campfire soon," the young woman wrote underneath. Whether she really burned her passport at the time is not clear. It is clear: Muthana wants a new passport and back to the US.
She can not express how much she regrets her decision of that time, says the 24-year-old of the "New York Times" and the "Guardian". Muthana is one of about 1,500 foreign ISIS women and children detained by Kurds in al-Hul refugee camp in Syria. Since she was captured by the Kurds, Muthana tries everything to get back to the US state of Alabama.
But US President Donald Trump does not want to take her back. Trump recently called on European states to resume 800 imprisoned IS fighters. Otherwise, the US would be forced to release the fighters. In Germany, this triggered a heated debate over how to deal with citizens who move to jihad.
For Trump's own country but this is apparently not fully valid. Muthana, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said to Fox News that she is not a US citizen, she has no US passport and no right to enter the US. Whether that's right is judged differently by experts. The legal situation seems complicated.
In fact, every child born in the US automatically receives American citizenship. According to the family lawyer, Muthana was born in 1994 in New Jersey. But Muthana is also the daughter of a Yemeni diplomat. The regulation does not apply to these.
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Hoda's father, Ahmed Ali Muthana, does not want to accept this and complains: against Trump, Pompeo and Attorney General William Barr and for allowing his daughter to return. In his petition to court, it is said that Yemen asked him in June 1994 to return his diplomatic passport. On October 28th of the same year his daughter was born. The family's lawyer accused the government of wanting to rob her of her citizenship. The US State Department, however, assumed in the meantime that Muthana was a diplomat until February 1995 - ie after the birth of his daughter - and thus justified his decision.
According to international law, after the end of conflicts, the former fighters in their countries are repatriated. In this case, the USA is affected to a much lesser extent than European countries. Overall, only a small number of Americans have traveled to Syria to fight for the IS. Three hundred Americans are said to have tried, according to a report by the extremism research program at George Washington University. About 59 people actually arrived after the report.
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One of them is Hoda Muthana. In 2014, she gets on a plane that takes her to Turkey. She had planned the project for a long time. For the trip, she took her parents' money for the college tuition in Birmingham. From Turkey she traveled on to the Syrian IS stronghold Rakka, in order to fight for the IS. Above all, she fought this online: In social media, she spread IS propaganda and demanded the blood of the Americans - a suicide bombing in America. Now she says: Others have taken over their Twitter channel.
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Muthana married an Australian jihadist who was killed in a battle. Then a Tunisian who fell in the fight for Mosul. Then a Syrian. Today she has an 18 month old child from her second husband. She talked to journalists about caring for her son's future. About radicalizing herself online when she graduated from school with her first smartphone: A Gateway to the Radical World of Islam.
Besides Muthana, there is another American in the camp in Syria. Even 46-year-old Kimberly Gwen Polman with Canadian-American citizenship wants to return. In the interview, the two women from The New York Times said there is another family of four Seattle sisters and four children to be moved to another camp. So far they have not been contacted by their home states in the Kurdish camp. Apparently because of the unexplained question of her citizenship.
This makes them different from the US male jihadists: Almost all the men captured in the fight against IS have since been sent back to the US: Twelve in all. One of them then returned to Syria after the report to commit a suicide bombing. Nine are in jail in the US. Two others are known to the authorities, but not in custody. Only the women are still in Syria. According to "New York Times" it should be at least 13. Why they are not transferred to the US is not clear.