A mother and her child in the Roj camp in northern Syria in March 2019. -
Maya Alleruzzo / AP / SIPA
Germany and Finland announced on Sunday that they had repatriated five women from northern Syria, some of whom have been prosecuted in their country for membership of the Islamic State organization, and eighteen children.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas described this joint initiative, which took place on board a specially chartered charter plane on Saturday, as a "humanitarian" operation.
"The camps in northeastern Syria constitute a long-term security risk, the more children there remain without protection or education, the more difficult it will be to prevent radicalization," the Finnish ministry stressed for its part.
He added that it was not legally possible to repatriate only children without their mothers.
Germany sent three women and twelve children, including some of their own.
In the case of Finland, these are 6 children and two women, according to the German Foreign Ministry.
"Very poor health"
This group was residing in a Kurdish-controlled refugee camp in northern Syria.
The three women of German nationality handed over to the authorities of their country were "wives of jihadists" of the ISIS "and are in very poor health", told AFP a spokesman for the Kurdish administration for relations international, Kamal Akif.
"They were transferred because of their state of health which requires treatment abroad," he added.
This repatriation marks a novelty for these two countries which until now had carried out repatriations but only via Turkey.
According to the German weekly, the charter plane, which left Iraq, had to make an unscheduled stopover in Vienna because a child was suffering from severe cramps.
The three Germans are 21, 24 and 38 years old.
They are all targeted in their country of origin by legal proceedings for participation in a terrorist organization.
These three women had reached Syria from 2014. Two of them to join members of the Islamic State group already there and to marry them, the third by accompanying her partner in Syria, who had ended up being killed, according to German media.
One of the three Germans was arrested on her arrival in Frankfurt and placed in detention on her arrival, the German counterterrorism prosecution said in a statement, the other two being released immediately.
Yazidi slave
In addition to participating in the EI group, the one who was imprisoned, identified as Leonara M. and aged 21, is suspected by the justice of her country of having, with her husband, used a young Yazidi woman as a slave in Raqqa.
Her husband was a member of the "secret service" of ISIS, with whom she had two children, according to the German prosecution.
The German left her country to join Syria at the age of 15.
According to the daily
Bild
, there are still around 70 adults with German nationality in Kurdish-controlled camps in northern Syria, as well as around 150 children of German nationals.
About 15 children and a dozen women of Finnish nationality are also still interned in camps in northeastern Syria, according to the Finnish ministry.
Globally, there are more than 6,000 children and around 3,000 mothers of foreign nationality, including 600 children and 300 women from European Union countries, who are in these camps, he said.
Half of the children are under five, he added.
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