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LEBANON

Dane held in Lebanon for fighting alongside Isis

A teenager who was born and raised in Denmark is being held by Lebanese authorities on the suspicion that he is an active member of Isis.

Dane held in Lebanon for fighting alongside Isis
Lebanese authorities say that the man is an active member of Isis in both Lebanon and Syria. Photo: Bulent Kilic/Scanpix
A 19-year-old Danish man was arrested in Lebanon for fighting alongside the terror organisation Isis, Berlingske has revealed. 
 
The arrest occurred in June but was unknown until the newspaper reported it on Wednesday. According to Berlingske, despite sitting in the Roumieh prison outside of Beirut for four months, the Dane has not yet been served with formal charges.
 
Lebanese authorities, however, contend that the man is an active member of Isis in both Lebanon and Syria. 
 
The Foreign Ministry confirmed the arrest but did not give many further details. 
 
“We can confirm that a Danish citizen has been detained in Lebanon since June. We are providing regular consular assistance as is normal in these situations, with contact to the family and visits to the prison,” Ole Egberg Mikkelsen of the Foreign Ministry's citizen services department (Borgerservice) told Berlingske. 
 
According to the newspaper’s sources, the 19-year-old was born in Denmark to a Lebanese family. He reportedly has family members in Denmark and Sweden, including two individuals from Sweden who died while fighting for the Salafist group Jund al-Islam (Soldiers of Islam). 
 
The Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) declined to comment on the arrest. 

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ISIS

Ex-jihadi housewife jailed in Norway for joining IS

A Norwegian court on Tuesday sentenced a woman who lived as a housewife in Syria to prison for being a member of the Islamic State group (IS), despite not actively fighting herself.

Ex-jihadi housewife jailed in Norway for joining IS
The Kurdish-run al-Hol camp which holds suspected relatives of Islamic State fighters.Photo: Delil SOULEIMAN / AFP

The Oslo court sentenced the Norwegian-Pakistani woman to three and a half years in prison for “participating in a terrorist organisation” by taking care of her household and enabling her three husbands to fight.

“By travelling to an area controlled by IS in Syria… by moving in and living with her husbands, taking care of the children and various tasks at home, the defendant enabled her three husbands to actively participate in IS fighting,” judge Ingmar Nilsen said as he read out the verdict.

Being a housewife to three successive husbands did not render her a passive bystander, the judge said.

“On the contrary, she was a supporter who enabled the jihad, looked after her three husbands at home and raised the new generation of IS recruits,” he said.

The young woman, who admitted having “radical ideas” at the time, left for Syria in early 2013 to join an Islamist fighter, Bastian Vasquez, who was fighting the regime.

Although she did not take up arms herself, she was accused of having allowed her husbands to go fight while taking care of her two children and household chores.

The trial was the first prosecution in Norway of someone who had returned after joining IS.

“This is a special case,” prosecutor Geir Evanger acknowledged during the trial.

“This is the first time that, to put it bluntly, someone has been charged for being a wife and mother.”

The prosecution had called for a four-year sentence, while the defence had called for her acquittal and immediately appealed Tuesday’s verdict.

The woman’s lawyer, Nils Christian Nordhus, argued that his client had quickly wanted to leave Syria after being subjected to domestic violence.

She had also been a victim of human trafficking because she had been held against her will, he added.

But the judge stressed that she had participated in the organisation “knowingly” and of her own will.

The woman was repatriated to Norway in early 2020 on humanitarian grounds with her two children, including a young boy described as seriously ill.

At least four other Norwegian women and their children are being held in Kurdish-controlled camps in Syria.

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