ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) announced its involvement in repatriating Islamic State (ISIS)-linked women and children to Germany and Finland from Syria’s al-Hol camp in a Sunday statement from the department of foreign relations.
“The return process was carried out with the participation of German and Finnish diplomatic teams, in coordination with the relevant parties in the KRG,” the KRG Department of Foreign Relations said in a statement on Sunday.
The KRG has helped the repatriation of ISIS-linked women and children on multiple occasions, it added.
Three women and 12 children were returned to Germany on Saturday, with two women and six children sent to Finland.
They were repatriated to their home countries from al-Hol camp, in northeast Syria, on a private jet from Erbil International Airport, with bilateral cooperation between the KRG’s Ministry of Interior and Department of Foreign Relations, as well as the governments of Germany and Finland and their diplomatic missions in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Mass said the repatriation was for “humanitarian” reasons, while noting that authorities will investigate “potential criminal liability of the mothers.”
European countries in particular have shown reluctance to take back their ISIS-linked nationals, despite calls by Kurdish authorities and human rights organizations to repatriate their citizens.
Approximately 70,000 people live in the northeast Syrian camps of al-Hol and Roj, most of whom are women and children who either fled or were rounded up as ISIS began to lose ground from 2017 onwards. Around 13,000 of those held at the camps are non-Iraqi foreigners.
France has the largest number of ISIS-linked individuals in the camps of any European country - around 150 ISIS-linked adults and some 250 children - but the French government has refused to speed up their repatriation process.
According to a Sunday statement from Finland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, around 600 children and 300 women held in camps in northeast Syria are from the EU.
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