Dutch must help to return IS children: court

The Netherlands must “actively” help repatriate children of women who joined the Islamic State group in Syria but the mothers themselves need not be taken back, a Dutch court ruled Monday.

The ruling, by a judge at The Hague’s district court, comes after lawyers representing 23 jihadist women launched a lawsuit last week demanding the Netherlands return them and their 56 children from detention camps in northern Syria.

The Dutch state “must actively commit itself to repatriate the children”, judge Hans Vetter said in his ruling.

“But it also means that the state cannot be forced to do something that’s impossible to do,” he added.

At the same time “the state has to take measures, as far as possible, to protect these Dutch children, even if these children find themselves in another country,” he said.

The government should use all options available, including seeking the help of the Americans, the judge added.

Children in camps such as Al-Hol in northeastern Syria were at risk of being killed by shelling of the camps, or being subjected to sexual abuse, and were already suffering from the lack of sanitation, medical care and adequate food, the judge said.

Most of them are younger than six.

But they “are the victims of their parents’ actions” and therefore the Dutch government did not have a responsibility to return their mothers, the judge added.

“These women knew that the organisation they joined was guilty of atrocious and serious crimes,” the court said in a statement.

There are 15 Dutch men, 35 women and 90 children being held in camps by Syria’s Kurds after they expelled the extremist group from its last patch of territory in March.

Last month, two women who joined the IS group reported to the Dutch embassy in Ankara and asked for consular assistance to return to the Netherlands after escaping from Al-Hol camp.

The Dutch government said it would first wait to see whether the women would be prosecuted by Turkish authorities.

Ankara said Monday it had started sending back foreign jihadists to their countries of origin, with an American already expelled and more than 20 Europeans including French and Germans in the process of being expelled.

Turkey has criticised Western countries for refusing to repatriate their citizens who left to join the IS group in Syria and Iraq.