The Swedish government has taken the children of five Islamic State women into custody after the women were deported back to the country from Turkey.
A Swedish court made the move to separate the ten children from the five Islamic State women and place them in state care under the law for special provisions on the care of the young.
“The courts have taken it very seriously that parents have gone there with children or to continue to start a family down there. Some children may have been in captivity all their lives,” Jonas Trolle, director of the Centre for Violent Extremism, told broadcaster SVT.
“Many of them may not have the problems that children generally have when they are subject to social services’ efforts. They may rather be turned off and very quiet and not outgoing as we may be more used to,” Trolle added.
According to SVT, one of the children had been married off when she was just 12-years-old. Another child, a four-year-old, had made execution gestures by putting his fingers across his neck.
All of the children’s cases are said to have been examined individually but the conclusion by the court was the same in all of the cases.
The children had come back to Sweden with their mothers in the autumn of last year after being expelled from Syria and Turkey and repatriated back to Sweden.
The return of Islamic State women to Sweden, particularly those held in prison camps in Northern Syria, has been a controversial issue, with some arguing that the country should not repatriate the Islamic extremists as Swedish law makes it difficult to prosecute them.
A report from earlier this year claimed that six Islamic state women who had returned to Sweden last year were suspected of participating in war crimes, but Prosecutor Reena Devgun said proving the allegations could prove difficult.