Repatriation of ISIS family receiving treatment in Erbil sparks political outcry in Norway
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region- The repatriation of an Islamic State (ISIS) linked woman and her two children currently in Erbil has prompted political uproar in Norway.
Norway’s right-wing Progress Party (FRP) has threatened to leave the coalition government if plans to repatriate the family go ahead.
The 29-year-old Norwegian of Pakistani origin and her children departed from Erbil on a 5:10 pm Austrian Airlines flight to Vienna, a Kurdish security official told Rudaw at the city's international airport.
The family was being looked after by Norwegian officials after arriving in the Kurdistan Region on Tuesday. Officials at Erbil's Swedish Specialist Hospital told Rudaw that the woman's son, said to be critically ill, was receiving treatment at the hospital, which has previously cared for other children leaving Syria.
The repatriation is said to be on humanitarian grounds.
“We fear the child is sick,” Norway’s Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soreide is said to have told reporters.
Child welfare services are reportedly “ready to handle the children” upon their arrival in Norway.
The woman, who has not been named, travelled to Syria from the Norwegian capital in 2012 with her now-deceased husband, before giving birth to a son and daughter, aged five and three respectively. She has already been charged with "membership of a terrorist organization" by Norwegian police.
News of the repatriation has prompted minority coalition parties to rebel against the government.
Norway’s ruling Conservative Party has led the country in a coalition with the FRP, Christian Democratic Party (KRF) and Liberal Party since 2013.
The controversy has not only “upset the KRF, but a lot of Norwegians,” said Finance Minister and KRF leader Siv Jensen on Thursday morning.
The party is said to be preparing a list of demands, due today, to be met by the government to avoid political chaos.
Others have focused on the immediate needs of the children, who grew up in the caliphate.
“Those children have been in a very demanding situation, a situation no children should be in. Like all children in Norway,they are entitled to the necessary health care, care and protection,” Norway’s Minister of Children and Family Ingolf Ropstad told VG.
Norway previously brought home five orphans stranded in northern Syria last June.
Bringing home the women and children linked to ISIS has polarized dozens of countries across the globe, particularly in Europe.
Following the fall of Baghouz, the caliphate's last bastion in eastern Syria, women have pleaded with their governments to return home, calls which have largely gone unanswered as states grapple with security and legal issues surrounding their return.
Correction: Norway's Progress Party, not the Christian Democratic Party, has threatened to leave the government.
Updated 6:14 pm