Families fear for detainees as US moves Islamic State prisoners out of northeast Syria
Rights groups and families of people held in prison camps for detainees suspected of links to the Islamic State group have voiced alarm after the US said it would begin transferring prisoners from facilities previously run by the Syrian Democratic Forces.
Earlier this week, US Central Command said it had transferred 150 prisoners from a facility in Hasakah province to Iraq, adding that thousands more could follow.
“Ultimately, up to 7,000 Isis detainees could be transferred from Syria to Iraqi-controlled facilities,” it said.
The announcement comes as the Syrian army has taken control of al-Hol camp, which holds about 24,000 people, mostly women and children, including about 14,500 Syrians and almost 3,000 Iraqis. Syrian government forces also took control of al-Shaddadi prison earlier this week.
Families say the sudden developments have severed already fragile lines of communication. Yasmina, from the Families in Belgium group, said relatives have had no contact with loved ones for more than a week.
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“We did not expect the situation to become this volatile,” she told Middle East Eye. “The last information we received was that water and electricity were being regularly disrupted.”
She said al-Roj camp, in northeastern Syria, appeared to have been taken over without violence, but uncertainty remains.
“The camp has been handed over peacefully, with Kurdish forces on the ground working on the transition,” Yasmina said.
However, she said families from western countries have received no confirmation about the fate of their relatives, adding that transfers may be more likely for local nationals or Iraqis.
Children separated from mothers
Yasmina raised concerns about other detainees, particularly children separated from their mothers.
“Some women have managed to leave, but others have teenage children held in male detention centres, and we don’t know what will happen to them,” she said.
A spokesperson for US Central Command, which is planning the transfer of prisoners from Syria to Iraq, said it was continuing the operation. The spokesperson denied that any children were transferred to Iraq.
Humanitarian groups say children are particularly at risk as the security situation deteriorates. Save the Children said around 20,000 children in displacement camps and so-called “rehabilitation centres” in northeastern Syria face heightened danger as fighting intensifies.
“Following recent escalations and reports of widespread disorder, the situation is rapidly evolving,” the organisation said.
“Humanitarian access is increasingly constrained, with limited clarity on conditions inside the camps, raising serious concerns for the safety of children and families.”
Save the Children said it had temporarily paused non-lifesaving activities in northeastern Syria, including most services for children in the camps.
About 30,000 people, mostly women and children, live in al-Hol and Roj camps, including about 8,500 foreign nationals from some 60 countries who were displaced after the collapse of IS and the fall of Baghouz in March 2019.
Late on Thursday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that non-Iraqi nationals would be temporarily held in Iraqi prison camps and urged countries to repatriate their citizens.
Sally Lane, the mother of Jack Letts, a British-Canadian man imprisoned since 2017 in Kurdish-controlled Syria, described the transfers as a form of “extraordinary rendition”.
'We thought the Syrian government was going to take over the facilities, so this has come out of the blue'
- Sally Lane, mother of prisoner Jack Letts
“We thought the Syrian government was going to take over the facilities, so this has come out of the blue,” Lane told MEE. “Most of us don’t even know where our relatives are. It’s been 10 years of inertia, and now suddenly an absolute crisis.”
In Canada, families of detainees in Syria called on the government in Ottawa to immediately repatriate the remaining Canadian nationals still held in the region, warning that they risked being rendered to face possible torture in Iraq.
Canada has repatriated most Canadian women and children from the camps, but it has resisted all legal efforts to force it to repatriate nine Canadian men still imprisoned.
Matthew Behrens, of Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture which campaigns on behalf of the families, said: “The Federal Court of Canada concluded there is absolutely no evidence that these men have ever been involved in acts of violence or criminality, but unfortunately, they have all been tarred with the same unsubstantiated security brush simply because as Muslim men they were in Syria at a particular time in history and had no way of escaping.
"And Canada has refused to end their detention in what many have called Guantanamo in the Desert, where over half of the tens of thousands of detainees are children.”
Concerns about the legality of the moving of detainees were also raised by Ben Saul, the United Nations' special rapporteur for human rights and counterterrorism.
Writing on social media, Saul said: "I am alarmed that the US is coordinating the mass illegal rendition and refoulement of detainees of many nationalities to Iraq, without assessing the risks of serious human rights violations including inhumane detention conditions, torture, unfair trials and the death penalty."
Detainees not a 'bargaining chip'
A Syrian government official told MEE that Syrian forces had secured the camps.
“Our first priority at the moment is to restore water and electricity and develop the infrastructure inside these camps,” the official said.
“Fixing the conditions is critical, as we know one of the biggest reasons for radicalisation inside these camps is poor living conditions.”
The official added that the government plans to give access to UN agencies and international NGOs to support people inside the camps.
When asked whether it would push countries to repatriate their nationals, the official said the issue has been raised with every foreign minister who has visited Damascus since the fall of Bashar al-Assad, adding that the government does not want to politicise the matter or treat the prison camps as a “bargaining chip”.
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