US brings house 11 Americans held in Syrian refugee camp for ISIS households | EUROtoday

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The Biden administration says that it had repatriated a big household unit of Americans who had been dwelling within the squalid refugee camps for households of ISIS fighters in northern Syria.

Eleven folks in whole, none of whom had been former Islamic State (ISIS) fighters, had been dropped at the US as a part of the hassle, Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated in a press release on Tuesday.

It’s the most important single group to be repatriated to America from the refugee camps, the place residents together with many members of the family of ISIS militants stay in horrid situations as their futures stay in authorized limbo. Many governments have resisted calls from the US to deliver house residents of their respective nations who’ve turned up within the camps after travelling to the Middle East.

“Approximately 30,000 individuals from more than 60 countries outside Syria remain in the al-Hol and Roj displaced persons camps, the majority of whom are children. As governments undertake repatriation of their nationals, we urge thoughtfulness and flexibility to ensure that to the maximum extent possible family units remain intact,” stated Mr Blinken.

“The only durable solution to the humanitarian and security crisis in the displaced persons camps and detention facilities in northeast Syria is for countries to repatriate, rehabilitate, reintegrate, and where appropriate, ensure accountability for wrongdoing,” he continued.

“The United States remains committed to helping those nations which seek to repatriate their nationals from northeast Syria, and to finding solutions, including resettlement, for those who are unable to return to their communities or countries of origin.”

The group contains one nine-year-old little one, described because the brother of a US-born citizen, who doesn’t himself have US citizenship. There’s no indication but that any of the repatriated Americans are sure for prosecution by the federal authorities.

A spokesman for the State Department, Matthew Miller, reiterated these calls on Tuesday as he spoke concerning the announcement at his every day press briefing in Washington.

“We urge all countries of origin to repatriate, rehabilitate, reintegrate and where appropriate, prosecute their nationals upon their return from Syria,” Miller stated.

He was additionally capable of affirm that “around 25” American residents stay within the northern Syria camps together with the notorious Al Hol camp, which The Independent visited in 2019.

Mr Miller took a second query within the briefing associated to Austin Tice, an American freelance journalist and US army veteran who went lacking in Syria in 2012. His reply reaffirmed the US authorities’s perception that the Syrian authorities is both instantly or not directly liable for Mr Tice’s continued captivity, and he known as for his launch.

“We call on the Syrian regime to ensure that Austin Tice and every other US national held in Syria are able to return home,” Miller stated.

The transfer by the US authorities to repatriate its residents was cheered by Austin Doctor, an knowledgeable with the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center. The organisation authored a report in 2023 which supported an organised course of for repatriating the spouses and kids of Islamic State fighters. The terrorist group’s bodily territory collapsed after a sustained worldwide effort to dislodge its fighters from Iraq and Syria, nonetheless, the ISIS ideology continues to promulgate violence world wide.

“Good news, & the result of dedicated hard work,” Doctor wrote on Twitter.

Roughly 30,000 folks, nearly all of whom are youngsters, stay scattered in refugee camps for ISIS members of the family in northern Syria, in accordance with the US State Department.

In 2019, The Independent discovered that authorities nonetheless noticed a harmful undercurrent of ISIS’s radical Islamist ideology inside the Al Hol camp. Detainees spoke of complete “groups” of refugees disappearing from the camp, with their escapes credited to Isis-contracted smugglers.

“We can see it happening all the time. Everybody knows,” stated Umm Abdullah, a 37-year-old detainee from Khartoum, Sudan. “You’ll see one group disappear, and figure out that they left. Then another group will go. Good luck to them.”