Europe has washed its hands of nearly 800 Islamic State fighters imprisoned in Syria and Iraq, even as U.S. and Kurdish authorities beg them to take them back, The Washington Post reports.
Even bringing back the wives and children of those fighters is an unpopular idea, though they are being detained in camps and prisons across eastern Syria, Iraq, and Libya.
In some camps, wives and children are dying of exposure, malnutrition, and sickness.
"It's obvious that there is a humanitarian crisis unfolding in the camps in northeast Syria and the prisons in Iraq that are holding thousands of foreigners," Letta Tayler, a global terrorism researcher at Human Rights Watch, told the Post. "Western Europe's response has been to look the other way. It just goes against everything that Western Europe says it stands for."
Only a handful of countries has intervened to bring back some of their citizens, including Russia, Kosovo, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, and France, though France is facing criticism at home from some lawmakers and human rights groups after 11 French nationals were sentenced to death in Iraq over the past two weeks.
Iraq is so strapped by the costs of trials it reportedly asked Paris for $1 million for each foreign jihadist sentenced to death and $2 million for those given long-term sentences.
The U.S. says Europe must take action.
"It is not a solution to leave these people in camps in northeast Syria. This is a burden on the people of northeast Syria," James Jeffrey, the U.S. special representative for Syria engagement, told reporters last week. "It is absolutely imperative that countries take action as necessary to deal with their own citizens."
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