No ISIS family handed over to Finland: Syria’s AANES official
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – An official source of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) denied on Saturday that they had handed over Finnish citizens belonged to the Islamic State Organization (ISIS) to the Finnish government.
“We have not handed over the aforementioned family to the Finnish government,” the source told North Press.
Yesterday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland announced it repatriated a Finnish mother and her four children from Syria, who had previously been in Hawl Camp.
“The repatriation process took place through Turkey and in cooperation with the Turkish authorities,” the Finnish Foreign Ministry said.
It is likely that this operation is linked to the smuggling of families of ISIS detainees, which were repeated previously in Hawl Camp, according to the source.
On July 17, 2020, Turkish intelligence announced it rescued Moldovan national Natalia Barkal and her four children from Hawl Camp through a “special” operation, as it described it.
Hawl Camp houses about 15,650 families with total of 57,516 individuals including 8,049 Iraqi families and 5,153 Syrian ones.
Additionally, it includes about 2,448 families with an estimate of 8,245 individuals including women and children of detained and dead of foreign ISIS militants.
It is also known as a “ticking time bomb” due to the presence of extremists of ISIS wives and children, and tens of thousands of their supporters in a camp sometimes described as “the most dangerous camp in the world.”