Female members of the Islamic State currently in prison camps in Syria, along with their children, could be all returning to Sweden this summer.
Several days ago, a Swedish delegation comprised of officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Centre Against Violent Extremism, and a paediatrician visited the Islamic State women in northeast Syria and spoke to local Kurdish authorities.
The Foreign Ministry’s press office confirmed the visit took place but claimed it was to establish the identities of children born overseas to the Islamic State members, stating: “The mothers were offered DNA tests to determine motherhood as a way to prove the children’s identity.”
According to a report from the Swedish newspaper Expressen, the women claimed the delegation told them they would be allowed to return to Sweden as early as this summer.
“They said that everyone can go back to Sweden this summer,” one of the women told the newspaper.
While the Foreign Ministry stated that it met with 12 women and 22 children, the NGO Save the Children has claimed that as many as 30 to 40 children with Swedish ties remain in the two main prison camps in the area, al-Hol and Roj, which are controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
In October, the Swedish Foreign Ministry sent its first official consular visit to the Syrian prison camps holding Islamic State members with the intention to bring back the children, but the mothers refused to let the children go without them.
Some experts, such as terrorism expert Magnus Ranstorp, have called on the Swedish government not to repatriate the female extremists due to a lack of laws to prosecute them when they return.
In December, Mr Ranstorp stated that while the Swedish government was conducting dozens of investigations, including war crimes and crimes against humanity, it was difficult to get convictions in cases involving returnees.
Last year, Somalian President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed offered to bring Islamic State women with a Swedish-Somali background to Somalia if Sweden refused to take them in. But the Swedish Foreign Ministry did not comment on the offer at the time.