Islamic State jihadists and their families are all in a hurry to come “home” now that things are rough in the region where they pledged their loyalties and committed the worst human rights violations against men, women, children and babies. Yet their so-called “homes” are still regarded by them as enemy territory — part of the House of War — to be conquered for Islam.
Islamic State bride Jessie Van Eetvelde, however, still hopes to return to Europe, because “the situation is really bad to live here.” She (and others like her) has now turned to sympathetic European courts for help. Should she and her fellow jihadists manage to return to Belgium, she will continue her jihadi mission there. It is a fallacy to view Islamic State brides as any different from their male counterparts.
“Detained Islamic State Members Turn to Europe’s Courts to Come Home,” by Valentina Pop and Isabel Coles, Wall Street Journal, November 8, 2019:
Jessie Van Eetvelde was a Belgian supermarket cashier who heard the Muslim call to prayer on a vacation in Morocco 11 years ago and converted to Islam. Back home she married a Dutch Muslim man, and in 2014 the couple headed to Syria to join Islamic State’s self-professed holy war.
Today, Ms. Van Eetvelde is detained in a camp in northern Syria, a widow caring for her two toddlers. She says she just wants to go home. But her country doesn’t want her—and is fighting a legal battle to keep her out.
“We hope to get back,” she said in a WhatsApp voice recording she made for The Wall Street Journal. “That’s what we all wished from the beginning, but probably nobody cares about us.”
European governments have resisted taking back their nationals who joined Islamic State in Syria, despite repeated entreaties from the Trump administration. Now Europe’s courts are weighing in.
Cases brought by detainees or family members in German, French, Belgian and Dutch courts are seeking to force governments to bring them home. Most are widowed women and their children, although some cases involve male fighters now being held by Kurdish forces in Syria.
Turkey’s recent incursion into northern Syria to push back Kurds from the border allowed hundreds of people affiliated with Islamic State to escape, giving legal ammunition to lawyers fighting in Europe on their behalf. Detainees, the lawyers say, face a greater risk of execution now that the Syrian regime is allied with the Kurds running the camps, along with dire humanitarian conditions.
Ms. Van Eetvelde, a 41-year-old Antwerp native, and her two young boys are now detained at the al-Hol refugee camp in northern Syria. They are part of a legal action in a Belgian court that includes two other Belgian mothers and a wounded Islamic State fighter whose son is also in al-Hol.
“The situation is really bad to live here,” Ms. Van Eetvelde said in her message, using imperfect English. Al-Hol is a tent city housing over 70,000 people, many times the number it was intended to hold. “Hopefully we [will] win and can get back with the children and have a normal life.”…