Countries Brace for Possible Return of IS Fighters

[misskit]

Bangladesh will bar citizens who left to join the Islamic State in Syria, authorities told BenarNews on Tuesday, as Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines took divergent steps in preparation for the possible return of their nationals after U.S.-backed forces demolished the extremist group’s last territorial pocket over the weekend.


The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), backed by U.S. airstrikes, announced on Saturday that they had captured the last IS stronghold in eastern Syria’s Deir Ezzor province and arrested almost 800 foreign fighters, including an unspecified number of Bangladeshis.


“If any suspect, in some ways, manages to arrive, we will arrest them and try them in accordance with law. We will not allow any terrorists to come to Bangladesh,” Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal told BenarNews, when asked about the government’s policy in case any Bangladeshi who fought for IS tried to return home.


The United States and other countries have largely refused to reclaim their nationals. During the past two weeks, thousands of people fled Deir Ezzor, on the west bank of the Euphrates River, according to an SDF spokesman.


Dhaka authorities have not determined exactly how many Bangladeshis left the country to join the militants who rampaged across Syria and Iraq and seized territory in 2014. But Khan said suspected IS fighters or supporters would be taken into custody if they landed at any airport in Bangladesh.


“We have instructed the airports to remain alert for them,” he said.



Hundreds from South, Southeast Asia


According to the United Nations, more than 40,000 foreign fighters from 110 countries might have travelled to join terror groups in Syria and Iraq.


That figure includes 800 from Indonesia, 154 from Malaysia, 100 from the Philippines and 40 Bangladeshis, according to a July 2018 report from the International Center for the Study of Radicalization (ICSR) at King’s College in London.


Meanwhile, a Malaysian security official who requested anonymity said Kuala Lumpur would expedite its efforts to repatriate 23 Malaysians who had sought help to return home.


“We are still in negotiation with several parties to bring them home,” the source told BenarNews in a phone interview, referring to the suspected militants. “Efforts are still ongoing and there are many procedures we have to follow and go through because their passports were destroyed because of the war.”


He said 51 Malaysians, including 17 children, were still believed to be in a Syrian prison manned by Kurdish forces. “Malaysia will bring them home on a few conditions,” he said.


As many as 102 Malaysians have ventured to Syria and Iraq since 2013 in hopes of joining IS, but 40 have been killed in combat or other circumstances, including nine in suicide bombings, and 11 have since returned home, Malaysian police officials had told BenarNews previously.


On Monday, Indonesia’s national police spokesman, Brig. Gen. Dedi Prasetyo, told reporters in Jakarta that the elite police anti-terrorism unit Densus 88 would continue hunting suspected terrorists and monitoring terror cells in the country despite IS’s defeat in Syria.


“Densus 88 are also still profiling and implementing mitigation efforts by implementing preventive strikes to anticipate lone-wolf terror attacks,” Dedi said.


Last year, Indonesian Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu told BenarNews in an interview in Washington that some 700 Indonesians had joined IS.


At its height in 2014, the Islamic State, also known by other acronyms such as ISIS or ISIL, controlled Raqqa and Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, and considered large tracts of land on both sides of the border among its important bastions.


IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who claimed to be the successor to the caliphs, the Islamic emperors who ruled the region in past centuries, declared the establishment of an Islamic caliphate in Mosul and persuaded thousands of Muslims around the world, including Bangladeshis, Malaysians and Indonesians, to travel to the region and fight.


In August 2017, 18 Indonesians who admitted to having joined IS in Syria were placed in police custody after returning to their homeland, officials said.


Col. Gerry Besana, spokesman of the Philippine military’s Southern Command, told BenarNews in a recent interview that security systems had been set in place that would make it difficult for Filipino fighters to return home.


He said at least two Filipinos – Mohammed Reza Kiram and his wife, Ellen Barriga, a Muslim convert – were believed to have joined the IS in Syria in 2015.


“We are worried more of the local fighters trained in a foreign land,” he said.


In May 2017, another militant faction headed by Isnilon Hapilon, the acknowledged IS leader in Southeast Asia, took over southern Marawi city and engaged government forces in a five-month battle that killed 1,200 people, most of them militants. Hapilon, who was backed by foreign fights, was among those who were killed.


Suspected pro-IS militants also killed 23 people in a bomb attack at a southern Philippine church last January, authorities said.



‘Bangladeshi origin’ not same as Bangladesh citizen


Khan, the Bangladeshi home minister, emphasized that many of the IS fighters who had been identified in the international media as Bangladeshis turned out to be non-citizens, even though they were of “Bangladeshi origin.”


“They will not be allowed in Bangladesh,” he said.


For instance, he said, Shamima Begum, who grabbed headlines after she fled her east London family for Syria in 2015 when she was 15 and married an IS fighter, was confirmed to be a British citizen of Bangladeshi origin.


“She never even visited Bangladesh. She is not our citizen,” Khan said.


Bangladeshi officials dealing with counter-terrorism often decline to talk on record about IS.

But an official with the national police’s counter-terrorist and transnational crimes unit told BenarNews that around 40 Bangladeshi youths had gone to Syria and Iraq to fight for IS.


The government never admitted the militant group’s presence in Bangladesh even after militants had claimed responsibility for a massacre at a Dhaka café in July 2016 – the deadliest terror attack in the nation’s history.


Twenty hostages, two policemen and two café workers were killed in the overnight siege along with the five militants.


In an interview with the Bengali newspaper Prothom Alo, Monirul Islam, the police counterterrorist chief, said Bangladeshis who went to Syria-Iraq to fight for IS did not keep Bangladeshi passports or any travel documents.


“Some of those who travelled to Syria have been trying to return home. Their photographs and other relevant data have been sent to the airports,” Islam said. “We have instructed to ensure that they must not avoid arrest.”


Bangladeshi physician Rokonuddin Khandker and his wife, Nayeema Akter, and their daughters Ramita Rokon and Rezwana Rokon and son-in-law Saad Kayes have been trying to come back, counter-terrorism officials told BenarNews.


They said dentist Arafat Rahman Tushar and siblings Ibrahim Hasan Khan and Junaid Hasan Khan, who allegedly went to Syria in 2015 and fought for IS, have also been trying to return.


Law-enforcement officials believe that IS fighters would pose security threats in Bangladesh by joining forces with local militant groups.


Bangladeshis returning from the Syrian battlefields must be questioned extensively, Brig. Gen. Sakhawat Hossain, a security analyst, told BenarNews.


“They must be separated from the ordinary prisoners inside the jails,” he said. “We need to know what inspired them to fight for the IS.”


https://www.benarnews.org/english/ne...019173825.html

[Latindancer]

“We need to know what inspired them to fight for the IS.”

Hick ignorance, congenital stupidity, and / or mental health issues.

[DrB0b]

Hick ignorance, congenital stupidity, and / or mental health issues.

None of those things. That kind of attitude will guarantee an endless supply of fighters for groups like IS. Like it or not most fought for beliefs and ideology, dismissing them as stupid is also stupid.

[britanicus]

None of those things. That kind of attitude will guarantee an endless supply of fighters for groups like IS. Like it or not most fought for beliefs and ideology, dismissing them as stupid is also stupid.

Nothing as stupid as believing in the fantasies of a 7th century warlord and slave owning child abuser, who is quoted in the main hadith as stating he was made victorious by terror, hence the problem.

[DrB0b]

Nothing as stupid as believing in the fantasies of a 7th century warlord and slave owning child abuser, who is quoted in the main hadith as stating he was made victorious by terror, hence the problem.

I admit you have far more intimate and personal experience of stupidity than I have but I'll stick with my conclusion.

[britanicus]

I admit you have far more intimate and personal experience of stupidity than I have but I'll stick with my conclusion.

At least I was not stupid enough to marry the wrong woman

[Buckaroo Banzai]

Nothing as stupid as believing in the fantasies of a 7th century warlord and slave owning child abuser, who is quoted in the main hadith as stating he was made victorious by terror, hence the problem.

What is stupid is Cutting your nose to spite your face.
You can not extinguish an ideology, ideas exist independent of people waiting to be discovered
Drowning people will grasp at straws, give them a better option , throw them a life jacket.
Give them a better idea.

[misskit]

Indonesia Verifying Citizenship of IS Families Stranded in Syria

Indonesia says it is working to verify the nationalities of dozens of people believed to be members of Indonesian families that joined Islamic State but are sheltering at a camp in Syria after the extremist group’s last bastion fell.


The process could take months because Indonesian officials first have to establish how many of these people, including women and children, are citizens before they can figure out what to do with them next, an official with the foreign ministry said.


“We have to verify whether they really are Indonesian citizens or not,” Arrmanatha Nasir, a ministry spokesman, told a news conference in Jakarta on Thursday.


He and other officials were responding to questions in the wake of news reports and online videos that surfaced this week, in which members of a group of about 50 people said to be Indonesians pleaded for the government’s help in being repatriated.


According to the reports, the group was huddling at the Al-Hol camp for displaced people in northeastern Syria following the capture of the last Islamic State (IS) stronghold in the country by U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces on March 23.


Arrmanatha said many Indonesians who travelled to Syria to join IS no longer had official documents such as passports and identification cards.


The verification could take more than three months and would involve the National Police and the National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT), which would have to confirm and cross-check information with various parties including relatives of the displaced people, he said.


“They will investigate whether they were involved with (IS) or not, whether they are Indonesian citizens or not. After that, we will decide what to do,” Arrmanatha said.


Since January about 66,000 people had left Baghouz, the last IS bastion in Syria, including 5,000 combatants and 24,000 IS family members, according to a report by the Indonesian-language news website Tirto.id, which covered the story from the Al-Hol camp.


A video posted by Tirto.id showed a woman named Maryam Abdullah, who claimed to be from Bandung, West Java. She said she had come to Syria from Indonesia with her husband, Saifuddin, and their four children.


“My husband is missing, there is no news,” she said. “Please help so we can go back to our home country, Indonesia.”


Last month, Syrian Kurdish journalist Hisham Arafat posted a video on Twitter showing eight children believed to be Indonesians after they were evacuated from Baghouz.


The children’s father was still fighting with IS, while their mother was killed in an airstrike by American-led coalition forces, Arafat wrote in his Feb. 26 report.



No reliable information


Arrmanatha said the government had difficulty getting information about Indonesians in Syria but said most of them had left the Middle Eastern country in 2016.


“The problem is that when they left Indonesia, they did not say they were going to Syria to join ISIS or stay there. So what we can do if there are Indonesian citizens abroad, we advise them to report themselves,” he said, using another acronym for IS.


According to 2017 data from BNPT, at least 1,321 Indonesians had joined IS or tried to enlist with the terror group.
This figure included nearly 600 Indonesian citizens who went to Syria and Iraq. Of that number, 84 were killed, 482 were deported while trying to enter Syria, and 62 had returned from Syria. Another 63 were stopped at Indonesian airports while trying to travel to the Middle East.


In November 2018, Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu told BenarNews that around 700 Indonesian citizens had joined IS in Syria and Iraq.



Dilemma


In recent weeks, as Islamic State’s so-called caliphate in the Middle East dwindled down to a tiny patch of Syrian territory, countries have debated what to do with their citizens who went to Syria and Iraq to fight for IS or live under areas controlled by it, but who now wanted to go home.


The United States and Britain are among those that have largely refused to reclaim their nationals who strayed into Islamic State’s orbit in Syria and Iraq.


Adhe Bhakti, a terrorism expert at the Center for the Study of Radicalization and De-radicalization (PAKAR), an Indonesian NGO, said his country’s government was facing a dilemma.


“It won’t look good for the government if these people are left stateless or in limbo,” he told BenarNews.


Some Indonesians who joined IS had destroyed their travel documents and sold all their assets in their home country, but when things got tough in Syria and Iraq, they changed their minds and wanted to come back to Indonesia, he said.


“From a security standpoint, these people went to Syria not to be tourists. They had an intention to fight and the level of violence was high,” he said, emphasizing that Indonesian authorities should guard against the possibility that returnees could commit terrorist acts back on home soil.


Sidney Jones, who directs the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict in Jakarta, agreed, saying that anyone who had gone to the Middle East to join IS should be viewed as a potential security risk.


“For humanitarian reasons, they are better off being sent home because their position is very difficult. They want to go home and the government should help its citizens,” she told BenarNews.


But the government should set conditions before agreeing to repatriate these people, such as compelling them to express remorse for what they did and to pledge not to return to radicalism, she said.


“There must be a special program for ex-combatants. A one-month program at the Ministry of Social Affairs is not enough because they have to be identified by agencies that can assist, or become their mentors,” Jones said.




https://www.benarnews.org/english/ne...019165508.html

[David48atTD]

Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, says Federal Government is open to helping children of terrorists coming home


Khaled Sharrouf's children Zaynab (pink scarf), Hoda (black scarf), Abdullah (centre, deceased) and Humzeh (front).

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has indicated the Government is open to helping terrorists' children if they are stranded in war zones in the Middle East.

Key points:

• Government and aid agencies are seeking a solution for the stranded children of terrorists
• PM Scott Morrison insists he will not risk lives to extract the children
• It comes as news breaks that the eldest daughter of Australian terrorist Khaled Sharrouf is heavily pregnant in a Syrian camp

The children of notorious Australian terrorist Khaled Sharrouf are among them.
Their grandmother has flown to Syria to secure their release and Mr Morrison said Australia is working with aid agencies to try to get that done.




Sydney-based grandmother Karen Nettleton has told the ABC the eldest child of Sharrouf,
Zaynab, is eight months' pregnant with her third child at the age of 17.

She was taken to Syria by her terrorist father and married off when she was 13 years old

There are fears her health is failing amid the squalid conditions of a refugee camp in the country's north.

Here

I can feel pity for those 3 kids and I hope that the Australian Government is able to repatriate them back to Australia
and provide the support which will hopefully re-intergrate them into Australian Society.

They had a lot of their childhood stolen from them by their Farther, I hope that their adulthood is also not stolen.

[Neverna]

A follow up on David's last post ^


https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-48737717


Australian children of IS militants rescued from Syria camp

Eight children, including six taken by their Australian parents to join the Islamic State (IS) group, have been evacuated from a Syrian refugee camp.

The group includes three orphaned children of notorious Australian militant Khaled Sharrouf.

The government were able to evacuate the children in secret in conjunction with aid groups, Australian media say.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison confirmed they had been freed from a "bleak and complicated'' situation.

"The fact that parents put their children into harm's way by taking them into a war zone was a despicable act,'' Mr Morrison said. "However, children should not be punished for the crimes of their parents."

He added that the decision had not been made "lightly".

"Australia's national security and the safety of our people and personnel have always been our most important considerations in this matter," he said.

Earlier this year he insisted he would not endanger lives to extract Australians from camps.



Read more at the link.

[Switch]

Hick ignorance, congenital stupidity, and / or mental health issues.

The article is about Muslims, not you dickhead. Nice self diagnosis though.

[Switch]

Indonesia could send lost terrorists to Aceh province. No one would notice them there.

[Klondyke]

“We need to know what inspired them to fight for the IS.”

Wondering whether bombardments of cities by drones and by other clever missiles - besides all the dealing with muslims and the attitudes - will not contribute to the inspiration, will it?

There are currently 25 millions (some say 75) people from those destroyed countries on the run...

[OhOh]

Would the "orphaned children" be supported by the local taxpayers, or is there a central government fund for Muslim orphans available?

How old are these "Orphans" 7 or 17? As we have seen sometimes Muslim "orphans" have grown physically larger than their western counterparts.

[HuangLao]

Manufactured and imagined boogiemen....

[Neverna]

Syria conflict: British orphans returned to UK

A group of orphaned British children caught up in the war in Syria have returned to the UK.

The children, who are all from one family, are the first to be repatriated from the area of Syria once controlled by the Islamic State (IS) group.

The Foreign Office was asked by the High Court to help them return.

The court heard they arrived in London on Friday and were in good spirits, having met with members of their family who they had breakfast with.

They were brought back to the UK at the request of relatives after they were made wards of court - meaning they were placed under supervision and protection of the High Court.

The judge said it had been a complex and difficult operation.

Mr Justice Keehan said the children had now gone to their family homes where they appeared settled and as happy as possible in difficult circumstances.

Their return comes after pressure on the government - and with calls from aid agencies for all British children who survived the fall of IS to be returned to the UK.

On Thursday, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the "innocent" children should "never have been subjected to the horrors of war".

Mr Raab added: "We have facilitated their return home because it was the right thing to do.

"Now they must be allowed the privacy and given the support to return to a normal life."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-50521918