AANES hands over 11 Russian ISIS children to their country
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – The Department of Foreign Relations of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) handed over on Thursday 11 Russian children of the Islamic State (ISIS) to an official delegation from Russia.
The delegation was headed by Elena Alexandrov, assistant to the office of Maria Lvova Belova, Russia’s Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights.
During the handover, Alexandrov said that the Russian government would continue its efforts to “bring back all the [Russian] children in the camps, during the coming period.”
Recently, the AANES has handed over 16 women and 35 children from ISIS families to a French delegation.
In the first half of 2022, the AANES handed over 116 ISIS children and 41 women from the mothers of these children to foreign delegations, according to statistics by the Department of Foreign Relations of the AANES in Qamishli.
After the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) defeated ISIS in Baghouz, the last stronghold for the group in Syria, thousands of ISIS fighters were transferred to prisons, while their families were transferred to Hawl and Roj camps in the AANES-held areas in northeastern Syria.
These families hail of more than 60 countries and constitute an ongoing and challenging issue for the AANES, which repeatedly demands the concerned countries to repatriate their nationals.