What does the fall of Damascus mean for British jihadists in Syrian prisons?. Thousands of political prisoners have been released in Syria but hundreds of foreign fighters are still being held in Kurdish-controlled areas. Monday December 09 2024, 9.08pm, The Times. Shamima Begum, left the UK for Syria when she was 15 and has been stripped from her UK nationality. The fall of Assad has created uncertainty over the future of dozens of British jihadists held in camps and prisons in Syria, as well as new fears for the UK’s security.. About 70 men, women and children are being held in prisons and camps in Kurdish-controlled areas in northeastern Syria after the collapse of Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate in 2019.. Although hundreds of political prisoners, including women as well as children as young as toddlers, have been freed from Assad’s prisons in the west of the country, no British Isis fighters are thought to be among them.. Reprieve, a human rights charity operating in the camps, puts the number of Britons in northeastern Syria at “around 20 women, 10 men and 40 children”. They are being held by the Kurdish forces with the backing of the United States.. The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebellion has created a “volatile situation”, experts said, and is likely to impact areas under the control of other groups.. Advertisement. Shamima Begum, who left to join the Isis caliphate a decade ago, when she was 15, was stripped of her British citizenship in 2019 and remains in Al Roj camp. Her family’s lawyer, Tasnime Akunjee, told The Times that they would “wait for dust to settle to see what this means” for her case.. A government source said that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCDO) has 18 live “cases” of women or family groups in Syrian camps, including up to 30 children.. About 700 people who travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight, from 2013 onwards, have been repatriated to the UK. The FCDO last repatriated a family in January, and brought several British nationals home in December 2023, including a woman and five children.. The US had put the UK under pressure to return more families, the source added, and this pressure may now rise.. Security experts said that the overthrow of Assad created uncertainty because HTS, which is proscribed as a terrorist group in the UK, could become a new magnet for jihadists wishing to do Europe harm.. Advertisement. As no one group has the military firepower to control the whole Syria, the country’s future is uncertain.. • Syria live: UK pauses asylum claims as rebels form new government. In total just over 900 British nationals who travelled to Syria and Iraq are yet to return to the UK, out of 5,000 Europeans. The Home Office estimated in 2023 that about 200 were unaccounted for, although this included a large number who had died.. A BBC investigation in 2017 found that 79 had died before the intense fighting that led to the collapse of the caliphate in 2018 and early 2019.. The Home Office has said that it investigates all those who return, and that the majority have been assessed to pose no security risk or a low security risk.. Advertisement. Dan Dolan, Reprieve’s deputy executive director, said: “For years, the UK has been urged to repatriate its nationals by the US, other security allies, and Kurdish authorities themselves. This is a volatile situation where lives are at risk … It is in the interests of justice, security and human rights to repatriate these families without delay.”. Mike Martin, a senior visiting fellow at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, an MP and a member of the defence select committee, said the US had taken the opportunity of Assad’s fall to “launch a major air blitz against Islamic State”. He said: “They do not want IS to be able to take advantage of this.”. He added that Britain, the US and even Russia, which has been hit by Islamist terrorist attacks in recent years, would also be seeking to neutralise Assad’s stockpiles of chemical weapons to prevent them from falling into the hands of HTS or other extremist groups.. The first Syrian refugees living in Britain have travelled home to see their families for the first time in 13 years, and others have vowed to return if peace can be reached.. Dr Ayman Jundi, a founding trustee of the Action for Humanity charity and an emergency medicine consultant, said that Syrians were dreaming of seeing family members and homes after being away for a decade or more.. Advertisement. “My wife and I haven’t slept for 36 hours, watching this,” he said. “I didn’t think we would see the end of the Assad regime in my lifetime.”. About 40,000 children from 60 countries were living in dire conditions in the camps of Roj and Al Hol in 2021. DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES. The charity’s chairman was in Syria, he said. “He is going to visit his mum in Homs, which he hasn’t done for 13 years. I haven’t been to Damascus, where my parents used to live, since 2010. I’m hoping to go by the end of Ramadan, for Eid and to see friends.”. Zahra Albarazi, 38, a British-Syrian who lives in north Wales with her Syrian husband, has not been able to go back to visit family since she fled in 2011.. “Every time we looked at my daughter, we hoped that her generation wouldn’t have to live what we lived through and see what we saw, and it will be something that will be in the history books,” she said. “I never thought I would see this in our lifetime.. “A lot of people around me haven’t seen family members for decades, they haven’t seen their house, their cousins they never met — this is a big thing. People haven’t seen their mothers and fathers since 2011, so being able to reunite and visit Syria is very top of people’s agenda right now.. Advertisement. “Everybody thinks it’s far too early to return to live … it’s not a safe country to go back to yet. We’ll see what happens in the next few weeks, but they are definitely thinking about this as a possibility.”. UK suspends all Syrian asylum claims. December 09 2024, 6.13pm. Matt Dathan. , Home Affairs Editor |. Oliver Moody. , Berlin. Hopes rise for American journalist held in Syria for 4,500 days. December 09 2024, 6.44pm. Josie Ensor. , New York. Video Icon. VIDEO. Who are the HTS rebels who captured Damascus and toppled Assad?. December 09 2024, 9.30am. Richard Spencer. PROMOTED CONTENT. Previous article. Why Assad’s fall is a blow to Putin — and exposes Russia’s weakness. Previous article. Next article. UK suspends all Syrian asylum claims. Next article
