Children of British ISIS Brides Are Being Secretly Repatriated, Placed for Adoption: Report – News18

British women who joined the ISIS terror group are actively repatriating their children to the United Kingdom for adoption, according to a report by a UK tabloid. These women and their besieged children, for years, had been living in an internally displaced people camp in northeastern Syria, following the 2019 fall of the Islamic State group.

Their fathers have either been jailed or killed while fighting overseas. At least ten children have reportedly been repatriated from detention camps in Syria, primarily orphans of unaccompanied minors, Daily Mail reported. Among them are two siblings, whose British mother is believed to have perished in northeastern Syria in 2019, with their non-British father currently detained in a camp for foreign fighters.

These Syria-born siblings were repatriated last year and are presently residing with foster carers in southeast England, up for adoption, despite the willingness of their non-UK residing grandparents to care for them. As per the British daily, advocacy groups assert that the local authority responsible for the children rejected the grandparents’ offer. Initially transferred with other relatives to the notorious al-Hol detention camp in Syria following the collapse of the self-proclaimed Caliphate, the siblings were later relocated to an orphanage, at which point the UK became involved.

Campaigners stress that seven other unaccompanied children have returned to Britain, with one allowed back last October with his mother. All repatriated children are believed to have undergone counseling, with older ones possibly referred to the Prevent deradicalisation program. According to the report, some 38 children with ties to the UK are estimated to remain in Syrian camps, along with 21 women, including Shamima Begum, who left for Syria to join ISIS at the age of 15 in 2015. The UK, having been the last Western country to resist repatriating families associated with ISIS, has made exceptions only for a limited number of unaccompanied children.

A London-based human rights group criticised the UK government for “abdicating responsibility,” highlighting concerns that boys could be moved to hazardous adult prisons upon reaching adolescence. Calls for a change in government policy are growing, with mounting apprehensions that children stranded in Syria face peril and are susceptible to radicalisation.

Richard Barrett, former director of counter-terrorism at MI6, told UK’s Sunday Times that the refusal by the British Government to allow the women and children to return to the UK could be dangerous in the long term. “It is hard to argue that these women and children pose less of a threat, either now or in the future, while they remain poorly supervised, exposed to the influence of their former Islamic State comrades and at risk of further exploitation than they would if under the watchful eye of our highly competent security authorities in the UK, and of their own communities,” he said.