Dutch court hands four women prison sentences for ISIS links

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A Dutch court on Thursday sentenced four women to prison sentences for up to three years on charges of being Islamic State (ISIS) members and complicity in “terrorist crimes” after being repatriated from a camp in northeast Syria last year.

“The women traveled to the battlefields in Syria and Iraq knowing that a war was going on there. They have joined ISIS there. Their husbands had positions with IS,” Dutch judges said in a statement by the Rotterdam District Court.

The four were part of a group of five Dutch women and 11 children who were repatriated back to the Netherlands last February from Roj camp in northeast Syria, controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

“The sentences imposed vary from 30 to 36 months in prison, of which 12 to 15 months are suspended,” the judges’ statement added.

However, the court also stated that “the women have explicitly renounced the IS ideology.”

Thousands of children of foreign nationals with suspected links to ISIS live in northeast Syria’s al-Hol and Roj camps, with human rights groups calling camp conditions “filthy,” “often inhumane,” and “life-threatening.”

“More and more is known about what the original population of IS area had to endure and there are hardly any words to describe the seriousness of it,” the judges said.

The SDF, who control northeast Syria, fought the lion’s share of the battle against ISIS and arrested thousands of the terror group’s fighters along with their wives and children when they crushed ISIS territorially by seizing their last bastion of Baghouz in Syria in 2019.

Over 50,000 ISIS-linked people are kept in the notorious al-Hol camp in Hasaka province, while thousands of others are kept in Roj camp.

Kurdish authorities in the region have repeatedly called on the international community to repatriate their nationals from the camps, but their calls have largely gone unanswered as most countries are unwilling to bring back their ISIS-linked nationals due to security concerns.

Dutch court hands four women prison sentences for ISIS links

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