By: ِYassmine ElSayed
CAIRO, Feb. 17 (SEE) - The future of the ISIS foreign fighters has always been an undergoing concern for governments, refreshed by the latest call by US President Donald Trump, as he urged Europe yesterday to receive and prosecute ISIS returnees.
A recent analysis published by euronews, details were put up for how Europe is dealing with the issue of repatriating ISIS members.
According to the European Commission, more than 42,000 foreign fighters joined terrorist organizations between 2011 and 2016, around 5,000 of which are believed to be from Europe.
Around 850 have been detained by the Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) in the last few years.
Initially, European governments generally turned their backs on repatriating their citizens, but some have since started to reconsider their stance.
The Republic of North Macedonia became the first European country to conduct a significant repatriation, taking back and prosecuting seven fighters in August 2018.
In January, France said it was considering the repatriation of 130 men and women to be tried, but a month later no progress appeared to have been made.
Germany, which has a lot of foreign fighters, is said to be watching the French case closely.
“The federal government is examining all options for a possible return of German nationals,” the German Foreign Ministry said in a statement in November.
The reluctance in Europe may stem from the worry that much of the evidence against any returning fighters may not stand up in court, a number of experts have suggested.
Speaking specifically of cases in the UK, Shiraz Maher, the director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, wrote: "For all kinds of legal reasons, much of what is called 'battlefield evidence' in this case would not be admissible in court, either falling short on evidential grounds or because of the manner in which it was obtained. We do not, for example, use intercept evidence in UK courts."
"The result is that some repatriated British fighters could simply walk free once they return. Clearly, that is a situation no one wants. Another option is that they could be convicted of lesser crimes – but this poses problems of its own." Maher's sentiment can be extended across much of Europe.
"It's difficult to prove in trial that they committed any crimes," Maarten van de Donk, from the European Commission's Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN), told Euronews.
"Of course, there are people in the news who say they only went for "good" reasons and were never involved in conflict."
"There is a black box there — even the people who claim they didn’t do anything."
While Europe appears uninterested in seeking its citizens out, there is one thing that is clear — if an IS member returns to their home border on their own accord, they can probably expect to be prosecuted.
UK Security Minister Ben Wallace told British media on Thursday that "anyone who goes out to fight or support organizations such as [IS]... should expect to be interviewed, and should at the very least expect to be prosecuted."
According to reports, the UK has gone so far as to strip citizenship from some British IS members.
The German Interior Ministry was reported this month as saying a third of its estimated 1,000 nationals who are believed to have joined IS in Iraq and Syria since 2013 have returned. Many of those have since been prosecuted or placed into rehabilitation programs.
On another hand, the non-combatants can said to be treated differently. There have been several media interviews with Europeans, many of whom are women, who left to join IS and now want to come home, claiming they haven't taken part in the fighting.
The most recent interview by The Times newspaper saw a heavily pregnant British woman, Shamima Begum, say that while she didn't regret leaving the UK, she now wanted to return home as she was worried for the well-being of her unborn child.
Both France and Belgium also interviewed their own nationals, whom expressed a desire to return home, while AFP interviewed a male German shoemaker, who insisted he wasn't involved in combat.
Van de Donk, from the RAN, said such claims weren't uncommon.
"Painting the picture that women are innocent and men are perpetrators is very black and white," he told Euronews.
"Not all women are innocent — some worked for the Sharia police, and we also know that a lot of them worked in recruitment."
But, "it's very difficult to prove," he said. So "it's a case of whether we want to give them a second chance."
On Twitter, Maher points out that even those who were non-combatant, foreign members essentially feed IS' propaganda machine.
"These are highly radicalised inpiduals who lent intangible support to IS through simply being there; their presence in IS territory alone represented a type of moral and propaganda victory for the group," he wrote.
"In many senses, the presence of non-combatant migrants represents a distinct form of propaganda of the deed."
With regard to the children, for Europe, it appears to be the priority and the first step.
Back in October, before it had relaxed its stance on repatriation, France said it was working on plans to return children born to foreign fighters.
In Belgium, the policies for repatriating children were broken down into age brackets.
According to reports, children under the age of 10 are considered to have the right to immediately return to Belgium, while those between the ages of 10 and 18 would be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.
However, the Belgian government vowed to appeal a court ruling in December that ordered the repatriation of 6 children and their mothers.
A report from El Pais said Spain had worked to help return the families of IS fighters, going as far to foot the bill for guides to drive them from conflict zones to Turkey.
Russia also reports to have brought home children born to Russian IS members.
While this appears to be a sign of progression for Europe, there is still much-noted hesitation.
Maher says this may be due to the pressure applied to also repatriate the rest of the family.
"Suddenly, if we could repatriate children, then pressure would follow to repatriate non-combatant migrants, and ultimately the fighters themselves," he wrote on Twitter.
On another hand, RAN, an organization composed of working groups with practitioners across Europe focused on how to face such challenges, has written a comprehensive manual which focuses in part on the re-socialization of returnees in European society.
"Imagine your child coming home from school and asking you if their new friend, a child who recently moved back from Syria with their family, could come over to play.. There could be a lot of issues with that," Van de Donk said.
"It's advisable to get them back into normal life, alongside monitoring to make sure they are OK, checking for repercussions."
Denmark's Aarhus model, which works through "institutionalised cooperation," has widely been reported as working as a method to deter people from leaving in the first place.
This deterrent is just as important, Van de Donk noted.
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