The German government is planning to bring back German IS supporters and their children from Syria. The four women and four children had been in Kurdish prison camps for years, SPIEGEL reports.
Investigation into suspected terrorism
The transfer to Germany is to take place with a US Air Force transport aircraft via an air base in Kuwait – arrival is scheduled for Wednesday evening. According to information from “SPIEGEL”, the women are being investigated on suspicion of terrorism. Some of the families are said to be in very poor health.
Among those taken by plane is 33-year-old jihadist Marcia M. For the German authorities, she is not only a suspect, but also an important potential witness, as she must also be able to report on the inner workings of the IS terrorist militia.
Her husband Oguz G. is also linked to an alleged large-scale ISIS terrorist plot. Its section for “external operations” is said to have tried to smuggle terrorist squads into Germany in 2016 after the attacks in Paris and Brussels. A major music festival was considered a possible target.
Pairing Islamists and Assassins
According to investigators, it was Marcia M.’s job to match Islamists in Germany with would-be assassins. As camouflage, they were supposed to marry IS fighters and take them home. Constitution protection learned of such conversations, in November 2016, two men reportedly stopped traveling from Syria to Germany. Marcia M. and her husband ended up in Kurdish captivity, where secret service officials from Germany and America could already question them.
Also on board the plane is the German-Turkish Kevser T. She is said to have left for IS in Syria with the Islamist Florian L. in late November 2013. According to state security officials, T. was involved. in smuggling jihadists to IS in 2014.
Kevser T’s partner died six years ago and she was taken to the Kurdish prison camp of Roj in northeast Syria in early 2019. The Düsseldorf Public Prosecutor’s Office is investigating the mother of two for participation in a terrorist organization foreign language and violation of the duty of care and education.
Teenager kidnapped by mother for IS
A 20-year-old from Hamburg will also be taken back to Germany. He was kidnapped by his mother when he was a teenager. To prevent him from growing up with Islamic fighters and becoming more radical, he is also being brought back. There is also a terrorist case against him.
40 Germans who support IS are still in detention camps or prisons in northern Syria. More than two-thirds of them are men.