BRUSSELS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th January, 2020) Despite a court's ruling to oblige the Belgian government to pay a fine of 5,000 Euros ($5,500) per day for each of the jihadists' children who are not yet repatriated from Syria and Iraq, Brussels is still hesitant to handle the issue, with the first bill already exceeding 100,000 euros as of Tuesday.
On December 11, a Brussels court ordered Belgium to repatriate the children of four Islamic State (IS, a terrorist group banned in Russia) members from Antwerp, who are currently being held in the Syrian camps of Al-Hawl, Roj and Ayn Issa, which are governed by the Kurdish forces. According to the ruling, Belgium must ensure immediate consular assistance to the children and provide them with identity and administrative documents, as well as travel tickets within six weeks. The deadline expired on Sunday with a fine system immediately activated � 50,000 euros per day for not providing assistance for the 10 children.
"Only the children need help. They are between six months and seven years, and all sick and malnourished," a judge ruled.
Meanwhile, the four IS terrorists � 28-year-old Nadia Baghouri and Sabah Hammani from Antwerp, 41-year-old Jessie Van Eetvelde from the East Flanders province, and 23-year-old Syrian fighter Adel Mezroui from Kapellen demand that they be repatriated from Syria along with their children.
The money from the government is expected to be put in a savings account for each of the children and stay there until they reach the age of 21. According to the terrorists' lawyers, their clients are not interested in this money, as it is used just as a tool to make the government take action.
The Belgian government did not appeal the Brussels court's decision. However, as the lawyers of the families did lodge a second appeal to force the state to also repatriate the parents, the state could lodge another appeal. Should the state win, the money for the children will have to be refunded.
Belgian media report, citing Minister of Defense and Foreign Affairs Philippe Goffin, that Brussels is doing everything in its power to provide the children with documents and has "activated all diplomatic contacts" to organize missions to deal with the situation. At the same time, the minister's office refused to give any comments on the issue to Sputnik.
One more aggravating factor in the situation around the children's repatriation is that the Kurdish forces guarding the Syrian refugee camps have stated that the children are not allowed to be separated from their parents. However, the Brussels court obliged Belgium to return only the children, but not their mothers.
As for now, a total of 12 of the terrorists' children have been taken back. Four other children of Syrian fighters � 27-year-old Tatiana Wielandt and her sister-in-law, Bouchra Abouallal, from Merksem � arrived at Belgium's Zaventem airport on Monday. These are the eldest children of the terrorists, who have succeeded in fleeing from Syria to Turkey in October. The Turkish authorities allow for the jihadists' children to be sent back to their homeland without their parents, and Wielandt and Abouallal now stay in a Turkish prison together with only two of their youngest children.
Numerous reports, including one published on May 22 by the International Committee of the Red Cross, denounce the living conditions in the camps of Al-Hawl, Roj and Ayn Issa. The severe lack of water, food, sanitation and schooling, along with widespread threats and violence constitute the main part of the daily life of several thousands of the jihadists' children.
According to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), around 3,000 foreign children are currently staying at Al-Hawl and other refugee camps in northern Syria. They originate from at least 43 countries, many of which are reluctant to take them back.
Geert Cappelaere, the UNICEF middle East and North Africa director, told Sputnik that these children should not be viewed as potential terrorists and could be re-integrated into western societies, but the governments did not do anything to address this challenge.
"Children who grew up in the caliphate of the Islamic State terror group may not be labeled as 'terrorists.' The fate of these children of terrorists who have fled the last IS stronghold in eastern Syria should not be ignored. The message that these children are undesirable is present in many western countries. Some 3,000 foreign children are staying at refugee camps in northern Syria. Reintegrating these children into society is a challenge that the authorities have not sufficiently addressed," Cappelaere said.
Cappelaere added that the reintegration of terrorists' children required courage and commitment from politicians, as well as the understanding that they are children in the first place, and will not necessarily become terrorists once they have grown up.
"In Rwanda in 1994, during the genocide, we saw thousands of children who were linked to people who committed atrocities. The majority of those children were successfully reintegrated into Rwandan society. Something similar is needed in Syria and Iraq. There is a solution for these children. It requires political courage, a political commitment. These children are children, they are not terrorists," he pointed out.
A representative of the office of General Delegate for Children's Rights in Belgium, Bernard De Vos, who visited the Syrian refugee camps during a humanitarian mission, also told Sputnik that Belgium should immediately take back the children to prevent them from radicalization.
"These children have to be brought back so as not to make them terrorists. Political parties, which oppose their return, instrumentalize the fear of creating insecurity in Belgium with the return of these families," the representative said.
The general delegate's office also stated that the children of IS fighters should be treated as victims, rather than a potential threat to the country's security.
"Besides that, the best way to preserve the security of our country is to do everything to guarantee their social reintegration � the risk of leaving them there is to make them the seed of terrorists � the optional protocol to the Convention concerning the involvement of children in armed conflict, duly ratified by Belgium, clearly indicates that these children must be treated above all as victims," the office said, adding that the mothers of these children should also be repatriated based on the "principle of respect for the best interests of the child, enshrined in the UN Convention."
According to Aldo Carcaci, a former member of Belgium's Federal parliament, who introduced the first proposal to take away Belgian nationality from all IS fighters who had left the country alone or with their families, returning the children of terrorists poses a great security threat to the country's citizens.
"Of course, my proposal was not accepted by the center-left government, and now we have a huge security problem of returnees, including children. When you see that IS criminals were teaching their children of four or five to decapitate or shoot prisoners, you understand how dangerous they can be. Youngsters are considered as 'children' until they are 18. This is ludicrous. By letting them return, we create a security risk for all our compatriots," he stated.
Filip De Winter, a member of the Belgian federal parliament, has traveled to Syria several times and met with jailed terrorists and their families in refugee camps. He also believes that the best way for Europeans to avoid security risks is to ban jihadists from coming back to their home countries.
"As usual, the hesitations of Europe in the last few years bring acute danger on our heads. European member states should have decided to ban all persons who have left Europe to go and fight over there � jihadists, their wives and children � when IS started its deadly extension in Iraq and Syria. Most of them have double nationality, so it was not a problem to ban them forever. European states have not done so and we are now in the hands of the armies of leftist lawyers who defend jihadists and do everything to oblige our countries to take them back," De Winter stated.
The lawmaker added that all terrorists who fled Europe to fight for IS should be prosecuted in countries "where they committed their heinous crimes," while members of their families were already too radicalized to be allowed to come back.
"The wives are often even more aggressive than their husbands. Their hatred of the western world is acute, and it is the way they are bringing up their children over there. We should not take them back. Full stop," he said, noting that terrorists' children are "time bombs for our western societies."
Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, a former candidate for the French presidency against Emmanuel Macron and leader of Debout la France party, stands for stripping IS fighters with dual citizenship of their French citizenship and imprisoning French nationals who joined the IS' ranks.
"Those with dual nationality must be stripped of their French nationality. Those who are foreigners should not set foot in France. Women and children, even those of four or five years old who have not fought, stay there. They are no longer French. Those who are French and have come back, must be placed in prisons under the article of the penal code, which punishes with 30 years of imprisonment, as any person guilty of intelligence with the enemy," he said.
Philippe Kerlouan, a French author, admits that terrorists' children have seen many horrors as their parents have chosen to join the IS, but states that for European countries it is important to not fall victim to excessive compassion.
"The French government has brought back from Syrian Kurdistan twelve children of jihadists, most of them are orphans. Others have followed. It is hard to imagine, when it comes to young children, how one could oppose these returns, but neither should one be naive or fall into the trap of compassion," he told Sputnik.
According to Kerlouan, supporters of repatriation go further and demand the return of all the mothers of these children and to stop case-by-case returns, claiming that such a strategy "is a victory over what jihadists ultimately sought," but it seems to be a kind of compassion trap.
"After the children, the mothers, then the fathers will come ... When we are caught in the spiral of compassion, more or less sincere, we end up treating the fanatic enemies of France better than our own compatriots. Is it surprising on the part of a left that often tends to be more forgiving for the culprits than for the victims?" he concluded.
