A British woman taken to Syria by ISIS and her child have been repatriated from a camp in the north-east of the country back to the UK. They are the first British nationals to be allowed to return since the end of the ISIS war in 2019 following a ground breaking decision.
British delegation met with local officials at a camp in the Kurdish-controlled region of northeast Syria to receive the woman and her child. The repatriations were confirmed by Jonathan Hargreaves, the UK Special Representative for Syria, in a Twitter post on Wednesday.
He stated that requests for consular assistance are reviewed by the UK government on a case-by-case basis, "taking into account all relevant considerations, including national security". The woman's name has not been revealed, with British human rights charity Reprieve advocating for her identity to stay protected, the Mirror reports.
Reprieve has been monitoring the woman's case and said she was “a victim of trafficking, taken to Syria by a male relative when she was a young girl” and that “she and her child have suffered extreme trauma”.
It is estimated that around 60 Britons, including 35 children, are being held in indefinite detention in Syria, most of whom were captured during the final days of the war in 2019 and have been held in indefinite detention in camps such as al-Hawl.
In total, 252 children and 93 women have been repatriated in 2022. Yet around 11,000 foreign children and women remain in camps in northeast Syria. The most famous British case is that of Shamima Begum who fled from Bethnal Green in east London and travelled to Syria when she was 15.
All three of Ms Begum’s children are now deceased and her youngest, Jarrah, died shortly after her arrival at al-Hawl camp due to the terrible conditions. Last month, a six-year-old child reportedly died after being run over by a truck in the camp, while other children recently witnessed their mother’s dead body abandoned by the side of the road as killings in the camp increased by 250 per cent in the second quarter of this year.
“The UK Government is effectively creating a Guantanamo for children in Syria", said Reprieve. Rights & Security International (RSI), reported that since June 2021 a total of 206 children and 76 women have been repatriated by Albania, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Ukraine.
The US and a number of other countries had repatriated "most" of their nationals, but the UK remains an outlier and until Wednesday had repatriated no women and only a handful of children.
The British Home Office has also removed the citizenship from some of those who travelled to Syria, including Ms Begum, in a move that human rights organisations have condemned as unlawful.
Countries fear that some of the detainees posed a security risk due to their affiliation with Islamic State. But human rights groups and authorities running the camp say that the existence of the camps proves more of a source of empowerment to Isis than containment of threat.
The UK Foreign Office has been contacted for comment.
