Somalian President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed has offered to take in Swedish-Somalian Islamic State members, stating that he will accept them if European countries will not take them.
Kurdish authorities have said that around half of the Swedish woman in the al-Hol prison camp have a Somalian background, a number estimated to be between 30 to 40 people, Swedish broadcaster SVT reports.
“If no one wants them and the Europeans do not take them back, then Somalia’s president has decided that women and children who want to can be taken to Somalia,” said Somalia’s European Union ambassador Ali Said Faqi.
The Swedish Foreign Ministry has refused to comment on the offer, with the ministry’s press spokeswoman Julia Eriksson Pogorzelska saying: “We are aware of the remarks, but there is nothing we can comment on.”
Sweden has had a mixed history with returning Islamic State members and fighters, with some politicians advocating that returning jihadists should be integrated back into society.
Others, such as terror expert Magnus Ranstorp, have argued that because there are not sufficient laws to prosecute them, Sweden should not allow returning jihadists, including female members of the terror group, to return to the country.
” I do not think the Swedish women and the children will come back. We do not have a good system to take care of them and make sure they are not dangerous,” Ranstorp said last year.
Many fighters and members have already returned to the country over the last few years, including some jihadists in the southern city of Malmo who have allegedly been recruiting in underground mosques, while others have been convicted of serious crimes since their return to Sweden.
Many other countries in Europe, including Sweden’s neighbour Denmark, have ruled to strip the citizenship of dual nationals who travelled to join the radical Islamic terror group, but Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven has refused to take similar measures.