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SYRIA

Homeward bound? Europe mulls fate of jihadist families

As the Islamic State group's self-proclaimed "caliphate" crumbles under an international military pounding, Europe's governments are grappling with a shared problem: what to do with returning jihadists and their families.

Homeward bound? Europe mulls fate of jihadist families
France has taken a firm stance against returning jihadists. Photo: Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt/AFP

Governments from London to Berlin have made no secret of their reluctance to take back nationals who went to fight in Iraq or Syria but now find themselves, as defeat nears, heading for home.

The prospect of taking back extremists poses obvious security risks on a continent that has suffered a wave of jihadist attacks in recent years.

Yet the situation also raises ethical dilemmas – particularly whether to abandon European jihadist wives to their fate, even if they have had a change of heart, along with their children.

“Madam Chancellor, I want to come home with my family, help us,” a woman identified as 31-year-old Nadja Ramadan, from Frankfurt, pleads in a video addressed to German leader Angela Merkel.

“I'm not a terrorist,” she insists in the video aired by Die Zeit newspaper, a baby in her arms.

Kurdish fighters detained Ramadan and her three children in Raqa, the Isis Syrian “capital” which was recaptured this month by a US-backed alliance. So far, Berlin has refused to assist her.

She is one of a growing number of Europeans issuing pleas for help from their governments – either via the media or through their families.

Last week, around 20 families wrote to French President Emmanuel Macron urging him to bring their daughters home to face the courts.

“It is difficult to accept that our daughters, who did not fight, might be treated in the same way” as their husbands, they wrote.

They urged “France, a country of human rights,” not to let the women face possible torture or death in Syria or Iraq.

'Kill them'

Of some 5,000 EU jihadists believed to have gone to fight, around a third have already returned home, according to The Soufan Center, a US-based NGO that conducts research on global security.

Some will have remained committed to violent jihad, it warned, adding: “It is clear that anyone who wishes to continue the fight will find a way to do so.”

So far, France, Germany and Britain have tackled returnees on a case-by-case basis.

In Britain, where some 425 have returned, the goal is to “put them in court so they go to prison for a long time”, said top anti-terrorism police officer Mark Rowley.

For those who cannot be put behind bars, he said, authorities will have to lean on surveillance and other “prevention measures” to keep the country safe.

But some in Britain openly tout a tougher line.

Junior foreign minister Rory Stewart said last week that there was only one way to neutralise British IS fighters.

“These people are a serious danger to us,” he told BBC radio.

“Unfortunately the only way of dealing with them will be, in almost every case, to kill them.”

Defence Minister Michael Fallon also said Britons fighting with Isis were “a legitimate target”, following reports that Sally Jones, a Muslim convert nicknamed the “White Widow”, had been killed in a military strike.

Children as a threat

Raphaello Pantucci, International Security Studies director at the British think tank RUSI, said governments “haven't been rushing” to claim responsibility for nationals captured by Kurdish fighters in Raqa and beyond.

Although fighters and their wives in most cases ended up in the warzone by choice, “we do have a duty of care to our citizens”, he told AFP.

“If they are showing up and we are able to put them through due process, that's what we should be doing.”

The children of European jihadists can hardly be blamed for their parents' decisions and beliefs, he added.

But in Germany at least, even these youngsters are being regarded as a security threat.

“We consider the return to Germany of jihadists' children, indoctrinated in a warzone, to be dangerous,” German intelligence chief Hans-Georg Massen warned this month.

“This could allow a new generation of jihadists to be raised here.”

In France, which has seen some 300 of 1,700 nationals return, authorities have taken a firm stance in the face of pleas from jihadists' families to rescue loved-ones being held in territory reclaimed from Islamic State.

Defence Minister Florence Parly said Tuesday that French citizens detained in Iraq could be tried there.

In Syria, she added, French nationals being held by different groups were being flagged to the Red Cross.

Those who made it home would be held to account for their acts, she said.

“People returning to France know that they are exposing themselves to systematic legal proceedings.”

By Michel Moutot and Katy Lee
 

SYRIA

‘I can’t go back’: Syrian refugees in Denmark face limbo after status revoked

Bilal Alkale's family is among the hundred or so Syrian refugees in Denmark whose lives are on hold amid an insufferable legal limbo -- their temporary residency permits have been revoked but they can't be deported. Now, they have no rights.

Syrian refugee Bilal Alkale and his daughter Rawan at their home in Lundby, Denmark on November 17th 2021. 
Syrian refugee Bilal Alkale and his daughter Rawan at their home in Lundby, Denmark on November 17th 2021. Photo: Thibault Savary / AFP

Alkale, who until recently ran his own small transportation company in Denmark, found out in March he wasn’t allowed to stay in the Scandinavian country where he has lived as a refugee since 2014, as Copenhagen now considers it safe for Syrians to return to Damascus.

His wife and three of his four children were also affected by the decision taken by Danish authorities.

Once the ruling was confirmed on appeal in late September — like 40 percent of some 200 other cases examined so far — Alkale and his family were ordered to leave.

READ ALSO: Danish refugee board overturns decisions to send home Syrians

They were told that if they didn’t go voluntarily, they would be placed in a detention centre.

The family has refused to leave.

Normally they would have been deported by now, but since Copenhagen has no diplomatic relations with Damascus, they can’t be. And so they wait.

Days and weeks go by without any news from the authorities.

In the meantime, the family has been stripped of their rights in Denmark.

Alkale can’t sleep, his eyes riveted on his phone as he keeps checking his messages.

“What will become of me now?” the 51-year-old asks.

“Everything is off. The kids aren’t going to school, and I don’t have work,” he says, the despair visible on his weary face as he sits in the living room of the home he refurbished himself in the small village of Lundby, an hour-and-a-half’s drive south of Copenhagen.

“All this so people will get annoyed enough to leave Denmark.”

For him, returning to Syria means certain death.  

“I can’t go back, I’m wanted,” he tells AFP.

And yet, he has no way to earn a living here.

“As a foreigner staying illegally in Denmark, your rights are very limited,” notes his lawyer Niels-Erik Hansen, who has applied for new residency permits for the family.

In mid-2020, Denmark became the first European Union country to re-examine the cases of about 500 Syrians from Damascus, which is under the control of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, saying “the current situation in Damascus is no longer such as to justify a residence permit or the extension of a residence permit”. 

The decision was later widened to include the neighbouring region of Rif Dimashq.

Despite a wave of Danish and international criticism, the Social Democratic government — which has pursued one of Europe’s toughest immigration policies — has refused to budge.

READ ALSO:

The Alkale family is considering leaving for another European country, even though they risk being sent back to Denmark. 

Alkale’s oldest child was already over the age of 18 when they arrived in Denmark and therefore has her own residency permit, currently under review.

Of the three other children, only the youngest, 10-year-old Rawan, still has the carefree ways of a child.

Majed, 14, says he’s “bummed”, while Said, 17, who was studying to prepare for professional chef school, says he now has no idea what his future holds.

Only a handful of Syrians have so far been placed in detention centres, regularly criticised for poor sanitary conditions.

Asmaa al-Natour and her husband Omar are among the few.

They live in the Sjælsmark camp, a former army barracks surrounded by barbed wire and run by the prisons system since late October.

“This centre should disappear, it’s not good for humans, or even for animals. There are even rats,” says al-Natour.

READ ALSO:

 The couple, who have two sons aged 21 and 25, arrived in Denmark in 2014.

“My husband and I opened a shop selling Arabic products, it was going well. Then I decided to resume my studies, but now everything has just stopped,” says al-Natour, who “just wants to get (her) life back.” 

“Going back to Syria means going to prison, or even death, since we’re opposed to Bashar al-Assad. He’s a criminal.”

Niels-Erik Hansen, who also represents this couple, says his clients are being “held hostage by the Danish authorities.”

The government is trying “to spread the message that ‘in Denmark, we almost deport to Syria’,” he says.

Amnesty International recently criticised Syrian security forces’ use of violence against dozens of refugees who returned home.

Danish authorities meanwhile insist it’s safe for Syrians to go back.

“If you aren’t personally persecuted … there haven’t been acts of war in Damascus for several years now. And that is why it is possible for some to go back,” the government’s spokesman for migration, Rasmus Stoklund, tells AFP.

Some 35,500 Syrians currently live in Denmark, more than half of whom arrived in 2015, according to official statistics.

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