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The United States repatriated two dozen Western nationals, half of them Americans Islamic State prison camps in northeastern Syria where tens of thousands languished.
The operation is the largest ever on US citizens and comes as rights groups warn of dire conditions in the camps, which are still in use some five years after the ultra-violent extremist movement lost its last stronghold in Syria.
In a complex operation involving US agencies, Kuwait and pro-US Kurdish fighters, the United States repatriated 11 US citizens, including five minors, as well as a nine-year-old non-US sibling of an American, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said on Tuesday.
The United States in the same operation facilitated the repatriation of six Canadian citizens, four Dutch citizens and one Finnish citizen, eight of them children, he said.
“The only lasting solution to the humanitarian and security crisis in the displaced persons camps and detention centers in northeastern Syria is for parties to repatriate, rehabilitate, reintegrate and, where appropriate, provide accountability for wrongdoing,” Blinken said in a statement.
After the repatriation, about 25 Americans remain in the camps, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
The United States has long demanded that European governments that produce more fighters return their citizens – often the fighters’ children.
Most European countries have done so, but slowly and despite initial reservations, especially in countries with a history of jihadist attacks at home, such as France and Britain.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which helped U.S. forces crush Islamic state a movement that once controlled vast swathes of Syria and Iraq administers the camps and has confirmed the latest repatriation.
But a Kurdish administration official, Faner al-Kaait, called foreign countries’ repatriation efforts “inadequate” and urged the international community to seek “comprehensive” solutions to the problem.
Kurdish fighters are holding more than 56,000 detainees with suspected or alleged links to the Islamic State group.
According to a recent report by Amnesty International, some 29,000 children are held in the two largest camps, representing “the largest concentration of children arbitrarily deprived of their liberty anywhere in the world”.
Blinken did not identify the people who were repatriated.
The New York Times and National Public Radio reported that the repatriated Americans who landed at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport included a woman and her nine children.
Brandi Salman was married to a Turkish man who took the family to IS territory in Syria, possibly by falsely telling them they were going camping, according to media reports. The husband was killed and the family sent to camps.
The other repatriated American is reportedly the son of a former IS member who was himself sent back in 2020.
Abdelhamid Al-Madioum, a naturalized American born in Morocco, has cooperated by providing information about the Islamic State and says he hopes to counsel others against extremism, according to court documents.
He found his two sons in Syria — one a U.S. citizen and the other a non-U.S. sibling — and wants them to be raised by his grandparents in Minnesota while he serves time in prison, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have warned the deteriorating conditions in the camps and questioned the legality of prolonged detention of people, especially children, without charge.
“Detention based solely on family ties is a form of collective punishment that is a war crime,” Human Rights Watch said in a report last year.
The group said children were dying in al-Hawl, the largest camp, from preventable diseases, hypothermia and tent fires, as well as drowning in sewage pits.
The only country repatriating people in large numbers is neighboring Iraq, which last month returned 700 people from al-Haul.
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