A group of Islamic State-affiliated women have gone on a hunger strike in a prison camp in Syria after demanding the French government let them back into France.
The radicals began their hunger strike on Sunday according to an announcement by their lawyers Marie Dosé and Ludovic Rivière, who stated that the women wanted themselves and their children to be allowed to return to France, after having deserted it for the Islamic State.
“After years of waiting and no prospect of judgment on the spot, they feel they have no choice but to refuse to eat,” the lawyers said, Ouest France reports. The report notes there are around a dozen women involved in the protest.
“In audio messages to their relatives, these women explained that they could no longer bear to watch their children suffer, wanted to ‘take responsibility’ and be tried in France for what they did,” the lawyers said.
The women are among around 80 females who left Europe to join the Islamic State terror group in the Middle East and currently reside in prison camps run by Kurdish forces in Syria, along with around 300 children.
While France has repatriated ten Islamic State children from camps last year in June and another seven children this year in January for a total of 35 children so far, the country has been far more reluctant to repatriate adults.
In October of last year, the mother of one female Islamic State member living in the al-Hol camp demanded the French government send her daughter cash or allow the family to send the woman cash.
“While the state is currently choosing not to organise the repatriation of its nationals, it is responsible for providing material and financial assistance to the latter or at the very least to allow their families to do so,” the mother’s lawyers said.
Other European countries, such as Sweden, have also been hesitant to allow jihadists to return.
In January of last year, Somalian President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed made an offer to Sweden to take in some of the Islamic State members as around half of the Swedish women in the al-Hol camp are from a Somalian background.
Perhaps the highest-profile single ISIS bride is Sahmima Begum, who left the United Kingdom as a teenager to get married in the Islamic State. The woman was later rediscovered living in a refugee camp by British television crews, and her unvarnished interviews about life in the Islamic State shocked Britain.
Opposition to her returning to the UK grew after she casually described seeing her first severed head, explaining the decapitation victim deserved it because they were an enemy of Islam. She was stripped of her British paper citizenship in 2019 but has fought to overturn the decision.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.