German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas announced late Wednesday to Thursday that his government repatriated eight women who had joined the ranks of the Islamic State, along with 23 children, from northeastern Syria in the largest operation of its kind conducted by Berlin since 2019. Maas stated in a statement that "the children are not responsible for their situation. (...) The mothers will be held accountable in criminal court for the actions they committed. Many of them were placed in custody upon their arrival in Germany."
The statement clarified that the process of repatriating these women and their children to Germany was conducted with logistical support from the U.S. military and that Denmark also evacuated three women and 14 children from their jihadist families during this operation. The German minister expressed, "I am pleased that we managed to bring back to Germany this evening 23 more German children and eight mothers," noting that the returnees, particularly the children, were classified as "especially in need of protection."
The statement specified that "this primarily concerns children who are either sick or have a guardian in Germany, along with their siblings and mothers." The returnees were held in the Roj camp, which is controlled by Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria.
According to the German newspaper Bild, representatives from the German Foreign Ministry and criminal police arrived on a U.S. military aircraft in northeastern Syria on Wednesday morning and escorted the women and children before heading to Kuwait on the same plane. Upon the military aircraft's arrival in Kuwait, the group transferred to another flight that took them to Germany, landing in Frankfurt on Wednesday evening.
For its part, Der Spiegel magazine reported on its website that the ages of the returning German jihadists range from 30 to 38 years, and they come from various parts of the country. Since the defeat of the Islamic State in March 2019, the international community has faced the dilemma of repatriating the families of foreign jihadists who were captured or killed in Syria and Iraq. For the majority of European countries, repatriation is conducted after each individual's case is assessed individually.
In the last similar operation conducted in December 2020, in cooperation with Finland, Germany brought back five women and 18 children from Syria. According to figures published by Human Rights Watch in March, there are approximately 43,000 foreigners, including 27,500 minors, held by Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria, comprising men detained in prisons and women and children held in camps.
