The government is silent about the details: More IS supporters are to be brought in

Sunday 20th December 2020

Government is silent about details
More IS supporters are to be brought

The first women to return to IS, along with their children, have been brought back to Germany from Syrian camps by the federal government. The judiciary is investigating all three women, and one is arrested at the airport. Further flights are planned, but the Federal Foreign Office does not want to give any figures.

The Foreign Office is planning to bring more Germans back from Northeast Syria. The Ministry is working “at full speed” to “enable German children in particular to leave Northeast Syria,” the ministry said on request. To this end, the Federal Foreign Office is "also in contact with Kurdish groups". The "Tagesspiegel" had previously reported that the Foreign Office was negotiating with the Kurdish autonomous administration "about a double-digit number of German women" who had joined the terrorist organization Islamic State (IS) in the past and who are currently in prison camps of the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democrats Forces (SDF) should be located.

When asked, the Foreign Office did not want to comment on the number, nor did the plans involve the repatriation of "IS supporters". In the morning, the Foreign Office confirmed the return campaign of three women and twelve children from camps in north-eastern Syria to Germany, which became known on Saturday, but also did not provide any information about a suspected IS history of the women. According to the ministry, the people who were brought back to Germany were twelve children, including seven orphans, and three women from the Roj and Al Hol camps in northeast Syria.

At 15 to IS: arrested on landing

Several media had previously reported, including the SWR, the "Bild" and the "Deutsche Welle", that these were German women who had traveled to Syria to join IS. According to dpa information, one of these women was arrested immediately after arriving at Frankfurt Airport.

The Federal Public Prosecutor accuses the young woman from Saxony-Anhalt, among other things, of membership in a terrorist organization abroad and of aiding and abetting a crime against humanity, as the authority announced. An arrest warrant was issued against the woman in May of this year. She was brought before an investigating judge of the Federal Court of Justice on Sunday, who put the arrest warrant into effect.

In March 2015, the then 15-year-old is said to have traveled to Syria, joined ISIS and married a member of the terrorist militia secret service. Together with her husband, she is said to have temporarily kept a Yazidi woman as a slave and sold her on. Together with her husband and their two children, she reportedly fled the northern Syrian city of Al-Rakka in the summer of 2017. The other two Germans who were brought back on board the aircraft are also being investigated.