Six mothers, parties to join the Islamic State organization, were imprisoned upon arrival. The fate of the sixteen minors will be decided “on a case by case”.
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Belgium repatriated, on the night of Monday, June 20 to Tuesday, June 21, sixteen children and six women, parties to join the Islamic State (IS) organization, from the Roj camp, in northeast Syria, controlled by Kurdish forces, where they were detained. The operation, supervised by Belgian soldiers, is the second of its kind, after the return, in July 2021, of ten children and six women. According to the cabinet of the Prime Minister, Alexander de Croo, the goal is to “put children in safety and offer them a future”.
The operation had been prepared by agents of the intelligence services, police and diplomats who had surrendered to ensure the identity of the women concerned and to carry out DNA tests intended for Prove their kinship ties. To be eligible for the return, they had to express regrets and assert their renunciation of the ideology of IS. Two mothers refused, thus prohibiting the repatriation of their five children. Two other women were not eligible because they have no children.
The central threat analysis organization (OCAM), which harvested all data on terrorism, judges since 2021 that mothers repatriate makes it possible to strengthen the security of the country and to exercise better control. There is no question, on the other hand, of bringing the dozen men to the country who would still be in the camps controlled by the Kurdish forces.
exam by doctors and psychologists
Before the first repatriations, women received no help from the Belgian authorities and, if they wanted to return to Brussels, they had to manage to reach Turkey, which then expulsion. About children, Belgium considers, unlike other European countries, that it is less dangerous to bring them back to camps than to let them grow under the influence of radical Islamism and, later, possibly return to Europe without control.
On their arrival on Tuesday morning, the 16 children – including an orphan -, all under the age of 12, were placed under the authority of the youth prosecution. They were admitted, according to the federal anti -terrorist prosecution, in “an appropriate framework” after being separated from their mother and examined by doctors and psychologists. Their future fate will be determined “on a case -by -case basis,” said federal prosecutor Frédéric Van Leeuw.
The six women were incarcerated in various establishments. All had been sentenced by default for participation in the activities of a terrorist group. The judicial authorities did not reveal their identity, but leaks – deplored by the federal prosecution – allowed newspapers to reveal their name even before their arrival and the fact that four of them had, before their transfer to Roj , stayed in the al-Hol camp, whose Kurdish forces have gradually lost control, for the benefit of IS members who make terror reign.
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