ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq repatriated over one hundred families affiliated with the Islamic State (ISIS) from the notorious al-Hol camp in northeast Syria (Rojava), an official confirmed to AFP on Monday.
One hundred and eleven families arrived in Iraq on Saturday and were transferred to al-Jada camp in Nineveh province, the official, who preferred to stay anonymous, told AFP.
Mainly under federal Iraqi control, al-Jada houses families with suspected links to ISIS.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) arrested thousands of ISIS fighters and their wives and children when they took control of the group’s last stronghold in Syria in March 2019. Most of these people are held at al-Hol, which is home to more than 60,000 people - mostly women and children of different nationalities.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) on Saturday reported that 113 Iraqi families were preparing to be transferred to al-Jada camp following an agreement between the camp’s administration and the federal government. The camp received some five hundred ISIS-affiliated families in late May.
Around 223 Iraqi families left the camp in 2021, according to SOHR as the camp houses over 30 thousand Iraqis from more than seven thousand families, it noted.
Last month, the Iraqi authorities announced their intention to close al-Jada camp, which is the last camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Mosul, as the Iraqi government began to shut down camps around the country in 2020.
However, the move was harshly criticized by rights groups as they called for voluntary returns instead.
Al-Hol has been branded a breeding ground for terrorism. The camp’s internal security forces (Asayish) in late November, arrested 14 Iraqis that “confessed to killings, chaos, raiding reception centers and targeting internal security forces” inside the camp.
There have been repeated calls from Kurdish and US officials asking the international community to repatriate their nationals from al-Hol, but only a few countries have responded positively as they are worried about security concerns.
